Friday Ramble - On the Edge of an Inland Sea

The lake is a wild and elemental place at sunset, mist floating on the water and draping the shoreline, the call of loons across the water, the susurrus of a heron striding the reedy shallows, the languid ripple of pike or perch rising to the surface and then falling back into the depths in slow motion. A fabulous place, time out of time, wonders beyond mere words. Apprentices of wonder are we, and it is good to be here at this time of day.

Old boats, bridges and wooden jetties, rafts, pylons and buoys—they are all human creations, and most of the time, they are anything but mysterious. At the end of day though, they are transformed by the fey trappings that always seem to cling to the entities along an inland sea as the sun goes down. Magical? Oh, yes. If the stuff could be bottled, it would retail for a small fortune. Such things, however, cannot be captured, consigned to arty little glass bottles, purchased or sold. 

When Beau and I arrive home, we are still dazzled by our sojourn on the shore, and we are, ourselves, a bit fey. Sundown dances behind our eyelids, and the light is votive in its shimmering intensity. The sound of the waves lapping the shore lingers in my thoughts, and the sound is as peaceful as a bell calling the faithful to church or temple or zendo. What Beau hears I am not sure, but his expression is thoughtful.

How long have we been coming here at this hour of the day? It's a transcendent experience, each and every time. Everything we need, almost everything in the world that matters, is right here on the shore of our inland sea, and we return whenever we can. In the words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we are always coming home.

Thursday Poem - Evening

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat

held for it by a row of ancient trees;

you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,

one journeying to heaven and one that falls;

and leave you not at home in either one,

not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,

not calling to eternity with the passion

of what becomes a star each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)

your life, with its immensity and fear,

so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,

it is alternately stone in you and star.

Rainer Maria Rilke

(translation by Stephen Mitchell)

Thursday Poem - Evening

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat

held for it by a row of ancient trees;

you watch: and the lands grow distant

in your sight, one journeying to heaven

and one that falls;

and leave you not at home in either one,

not quite so still and dark as the darkened

houses, not calling to eternity with

the passion of what becomes a star

each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)

your life, with its immensity and fear,

so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,

it is alternately stone in you and star.

Rainer Maria Rilke

(translation by Stephen Mitchell)

By the Winter River

The north wind brushes snowflakes away from ice on the river, and clouds of displaced white swirl through the air like confetti. Light flickers through nearby trees and everything sparkles: river, snowdrifts, whiskery branches and frozen weeds along the shore. The scene is uplifting for a crotchety human in December's middling pages. I long for light, and the sunshine is a shawl across my shoulders as it comes and goes through the clouds and the mist over the river—it's like honey in my cup.

Cattails, sedges and spiky wetland grasses fringe the waterway all the way along, their stalwart toes planted in the frozen mud, and withered, dessicated stalks swaying in the wind. The plumes and spikes outlined against the sky are pleasing when one can actually see them, their artfully curling tops eloquent of something wild and elemental and engaging. So too are the frosted fields, fences and trees on the far shore, the cobalt hues of hoarfrost, snow and ice, the golden setting sun painting the river, the diaphanous veil of cold vapor floating above everything.

There are no caroling birds by the river now, and there is silence for the most part, but this week, I remembered how the waterway sang jubilantly in the spring as it thawed, how it murmured softly against the shore on hot summer days. I remembered loons calling across the water in early morning and the last herons of autumn standing motionless in the reeds as the sun went down behind the trees on the other side. I thought of Vladimir Nabokov's memoir, "Speak Memory". On another day, that might have been a good title for this post written in the depths of winter.

The world around me is a manuscript written in wind and light. How on earth am I going to fit sky, river, tempest and dancing snow into one 5x7 image? The sensible thing to do might be to just stand here quietly committing the scene to memory and take no photos at all, but I have never been sensible.

Thursday Poem - The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

Thursday Evening - Evening

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat

held for it by a row of ancient trees;

you watch: and the lands grow distant

in your sight, one journeying to

heaven and one that falls;

and leave you not at home in either one,

not quite so still and dark as the darkened

houses, not calling to eternity with

the passion of what becomes a star

each night, and rises;

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)

your life, with its immensity and fear,

so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,

it is alternately stone in you and star.

Rainer Maria Rilke

(translation by Stephen Mitchell)

In My Cups and Loving It

Rain on the windows etches linenfold panels on the glass panes and splatter paints the umbrella out on the deck. The garden and old trees beyond are barely visible in the downpour and the murk. Water hitting the roof tiles, running through the eaves and downspout and gushing into the rain barrel at the corner of the house is a pleasing sound. We are a long way from the Bay of Bengal for such seasonal weather phenomena, but this day has a monsoon vibe, and no mistake.

One of my great aunties, I can't remember which one, used to refer to spells of uncontrolled weeping and wailing as "having monsoons", and the phrase has stayed with me since I heard it years ago. Having monsoons is surely a more graceful way of describing unsightly displays of whining, caterwauling and waterworks.

On this side of the windows is a stack of journals, mostly blank because they are too lovely for my scrawling and hen scratching. There too are pens, a candle in a jar and a beaker holding a fragrant lagoon of Darjeeling, also a couple of tarot/oracle decks. The art glass chandelier above the table turns everything on its surface into tiles and tesserae and little squares of light. Looking at it, I am off and thinking of mosaics.

Gardening in such weather is out of the question, and I have to do something. This is a good day for reorganizing bookshelves, art and stationery cupboards, for reordering the multitudinous folders on this computer. It is also grand day for drinking tea and reading, for rocking gently along with Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas, the Mozart horn concertos, the Bach preludes and  anything at all by Antonio Vivaldi. Also, the Mediaeval Baebes and the Kingsfold Suite.

Tucked somewhere in the midst of such lovely pursuits are bowls of fresh strawberries and peaches, a batch of molasses cookies, scones and a loaf of sourdough. Having a day like this once in a while is no' a bad thing.

Friday Ramble - Winter

This week's word hails from the Old English winter (plural wintru) meaning "the wet season". At first glance, it seems odd, but winter is usually the wettest season of the year. There are a few contenders for the word's Proto-Indo-European origins, the most popular being the PIE root forms *wend- and *wed- meaning "wet". Other possibilities include the PIE roots *wind- meaning "white", and *gheim-. The latter also means "winter" and forms part of chimera, hibernate, and the mightiest mountain range of them all, Himalaya.

Whether or not the season involves snow and icy temperatures or just a hatful of rain, most cultures on island earth have a word for it, and it has a singular place in our thoughts, dancing in a stronger light than its other, more moderate kin. Those of us who live in the north tend to predicate our agricultural and culinary activities in spring, summer and autumn on making ready for the long white season.

For the Celts, winter began at Samhain (October 31) and ended on Imbolc (February 1) when springtime arrived. The Winter Solstice on or about December 21 marked the shortest day and longest night of the year, and it was a rowdy celebration of the highest order. From that day onward, the light of the sun would return, a little more every day until the Summer Solstice in June. The legendary King Arthur was believed to have been born on the Winter Solstice, and Druids sometimes refer to the Winter Solstice as Alban Arthuan ("The Light of Arthur").

Rugged northerners that they were, the Norse knew all about winter. They counted their years in winters and thought the world would end after the mightiest winter (the fimbulvetr) of them all. Their beliefs, compiled in the 13th century Icelandic Edda, contain a wealth of oral material from much earlier sources, and the collection is the main source of everything we know about Norse literature, beliefs, customs, deities and creation mythologies. One of these days, I will work my way through the Edda again, and the idea of doing it in winter seems appropriate.

It all comes down to cosmic balance. We owe the lineaments of our existence in the Great Round to a tilt in the earth's axis as it spins merrily in space. When winter reigns here in the north, the happy lands south of the equator are cavorting in summer, and I cling tenaciously to that thought in the depths of frozen January. Somewhere in the world, it is warm and sunny, and sentient creatures are kicking up their heels in the light.

Winter gifts us with the most brilliantly blue skies of the calendar year by day, and the most spectacular stellar expanses by night. There is nothing to compare with the sun shining through frosted trees on a cold morning, with the sound of falling snow in the woods, with darknesses when the stars seem so close one can almost reach up and touch them. Winter star gazing is a chilly business, but one I would not miss for anything in the great wide world.

When winter beckons, I think about moving further south, but it isn't going to happen. Instead, I pile up books and music for the long nights and accumulate tea. I stir curries, make bread and stews, ponder the ranks of jams and pickles in the household larder. I make skis, snowshoes and boots ready for treks in the woods. Rambles will be brief again this winter, but I will be taking them, and Beau will be with me every step of the way.

There is clarity and a measure of comfort in knowing that long after I am gone, the winter fields and forests of the eastern Ontario highlands will remain, their snows unmarred by the clumsy foorprints of this old hen. To know the north woods, one has to wander through them in winter, spend hours tracing the shapes of sleeping trees with eyes and lens, listen to snow falling among them, perhaps become a tree herself.

Shining Through

Is this place an ocean or a desert in winter? I am never sure, but either way, there is always something to feast one's eyes on and capture with the lens. Old windows, heaps of books, lighted candles, bowls of fruit and cups of tea, it's all good. Isn't a little uncertainty a good thing, every now and then?

Before the first snow of falls, I always wonder how I am going to survive without autumn's shapes and fiery colors, feel a vague anxiety contemplating the monochromatic days and weeks and months to come. Shame on me for harboring such morose and mutinous thoughts. I should know better. There is a whole lot to see out there.

There are patterns everywhere, and they all have to do with liquid turnings and sparkling transformation: feathery patterns in river ice as it forms, glossy icicles suspended from trees along the shore, field grasses poking their silvery heads out of drifts, beads of water falling in the garden and freezing in midair, fallen leaves with snow crystals shining through. Everything my cronish eye alights on is food for camera and lens, a good thing on days when I am not able to wander as far as I would like to.

Absent the vibrant and earthy colors cavorting on my palette at other times of the year, winter's offerings are a constellation of swirling shapes and patterns and hues, each and every one exquisite. Shining through a friend's frosted kitchen window, the egg yolk sun sings and dances, beguiles and enchants, hollers for recognition. And all those glorious colors... What on earth was I worried about?

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

Creepers, Clouds and Early Light

No doubt about it, colors in the landscape are turning toward autumn. Where vibrant greens reigned in the hedgerows and woods only a few days ago, tattered beiges, creams and greys are coming into view. Here and there are swaths of gold, crimson, rust and copper, alluring splashes of purple, indigo and burgundy.

There is a different slant to light filtering through trees in the park, and on morning walks, their shadows fall across our path, as sharp as knives. Sunbeams spark off wet grasses along the way, and every puddle is a sea of light.

Around the corner, five bright fingers of Virginia creeper rest on the dew-spattered hood of a parked car like a mandala, like an open, beckoning hand. The vehicle's polished surface holds clouds and sky too, and the tableau stops us right in our tracks.

Such fragrances at this time of year, ripening crabapples, aromatic leaves and wild herbs going to seed, nuts, berries, acorns and the occasional chestnut (or conker). On the trail, I pick up a ripe walnut and breathe in its fine, astringent perfume. My little tally of wonders wild and natural grows longer with every passing day, a splendid litany for this precious interval as one season dances into another.

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

I have always loved the gaps, the spaces between things, as much as the things. I love staring, pondering, mulling, puttering. I love the times when someone or something is late—there’s that rich possibility of noticing more, in the meantime … Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Friday Ramble - On the Edge of an Inland Sea

The lake is a wild and elemental place at sunset, mist floating on the water and draping the shoreline, here and there the call of a loon, the susurrus of a heron striding the reedy shallows, the languid ripple of pike or perch rising to the surface and then falling back into the depths in slow motion.

Old boats, bridges and wooden jetties, rafts, pylons and buoys — all are human creations, and in ordinary terms, they are anything except mysterious. At the end of day, they are transformed by light, clouds and water, and they take on the fey trappings worn by all things dwelling on foggy inland seas at sunset. Is it magical? For sure, and if the stuff could be bottled, it would retail for a small fortune. It cannot, however, be captured or sold.

When the scribe arrives home, she is still dazzled by her sojourn on the shore, and she is, herself, a bit fey. Sundown dances behind her eyelids, and the light is votive in its shimmering intensity. She still hears waves lapping the shore, and the sound is as peaceful as a bell calling her to church or temple or meditation.

We have been coming here for many years, sometimes on foot, and when big life stuff takes over, we come in our thoughts. Either way, it is always an uplifting experience. Everything we need, almost everything in the world that matters, is right here on the shore, and we return whenever we can, however we can. In the sublime words of Ursula K. Le Guin, we are always coming home.

Jacks Are Dancing

Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum)

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

The quiet alcoves down near the creek on the Two Hundred Acre Wood are one of my favorite places in the great wide world, and in any season.

In autumn, the ground is carpeted in fallen beech and maple leaves, a few vibrant ferns still waving their fronds in sunlit recesses. Light flicker flickers through the old trees, and every sunbeam is filled with madcap motes of leaf dust and pollen tripping the light fantastic. Meadowsweet and cohosh have gone to seed, and their heady aroma fills the air. Is there magic in the air too? Yes, there is, heaps and cauldrons of it.

In winter, snow and ice cover the ground for months at a time, and creek's voice is muffled under its frigid blanket. The sheltering trees on the hillside above are bare and silent, and only the north wind comes to call.

In springtime, the fragrant, crumbly earth near the stream emerges from the snow, and woodcocks (sometimes called timberdoodles or night partridges) probe the soft ground for worms and grubs. On spring nights, male woodcocks perform astonishing courtship flights (sky dances) overhead, providing their own music of twitters and liquid warbles. Below, the creek sings a raucous ditty as it gambols downhill with its tumbling freight of broken twigs, pebbles and desiccated leaves, and the trees that were silent all winter are filled with jubilant, returning birds. There is music everywhere.

Hallelujah, summer has arrived, and down by the creek, "jacks" are dancing in all their stripey magnificence. Wood ducks are nesting on a pond nearby, and the forest is green again. Trees sigh overhead, and whole chorales of robins and grosbeaks hop from branch to branch in the overstory and sing their hearts out. If Beau and I could do better than croaking and rumbling, we would do a little singing ourselves.

We got through winter without serious tumbles this time around, and with our wits (mostly) intact. We even managed to do a little inward blooming of our own now and then. Spring was brief and glorious and we reveled in its return, but hallelujah, summer has arrived. We can do this. Verily, merrily, we can do this.

Thursday Poem - Scenic Route

(For Lucy, who called them "ghost houses.")

Someone was always leaving

and never coming back.

The wooden houses wait like old wives

along this road; they are everywhere,

abandoned, leaning, turning gray.

Someone always traded

the lonely beauty

of hemlock and stony lakeshore

for survival, packed up his life

and drove off to the city.

In the yards the apple trees

keep hanging on, but the fruit

grows smaller year by year.

When we come this way again

the trees will have gone wild,

the houses collapsed, not even worth

the human act of breaking in.

Fields will have taken over.

What we will recognize

is the wind, the same fierce wind,

which has no history.

Lisel Mueller

(From Alive Together)

Friday Ramble, River

To trace the history of a river or a raindrop . . . is also to trace the history of the soul, the history of the mind descending and arising in the body. In both, we constantly seek and stumble upon divinity, which like feeding the lake, and the spring becoming a waterfall, feeds, spills, falls, and feeds itself all over again.

(Gretel Ehrlich, from Islands, The Universe, Home)

This week's word comes to us through the good offices of the Middle English and Anglo-Norman rivere and the Vulgar Latin riparia, thence the proper Latin riparius and ripa all meaning "of a bank" or simply "bank". The word's closest kin is the adjective riparian, and we use it to describe the fertile ground along waterways and those who live in such places. To be called riparian would be a fine old thing.

From the quiet alcoves and fields of their beginning places to the lakes and estuaries where they end their journeys and merge into their greater kin, a thousand and one little rivers in the Lanark highlands lift their voices, murmuring, cooing, laughing, singing, occasionally roaring. At sunset or in cool morning light, reflections of sky and clouds and trees fill every pool and eddy. After dark, the moon pours its light over everything and Luna seems as much a dweller in the quiet waters as she is in the sky above.

Solitary voices, choruses and concertos, there is attentive presence and connection in every note, and what a metaphor for life and journeying. If I could have named myself, the name would probably have been "River". As it happens, the youngest member of the family now wears the name, and I was delighted when it was chosen. I would like to be around to explore puddles, rivers and tide pools with her in a few years.

Wherever we land up living out our days, we are never far from rivers, and they are fine motifs for wandering. If we are lucky, we will know many in our lives, learn their dialect and cadence, trace the patterns of their ebbing and flowing, commit their rumbling chants and fluid harmonies to fragile memory — the canticles of earth's rivers are ancient stories, and they are the music of our journey.

A peaceful river and a few golden summer full moons, what more can one ask for?

Friday Ramble - Earth

Earth is a good word for pondering in this all-too-brief and shaggy season as we till our garden plots and and tend the sweet beginnings of the harvest to come. All things, or at least most things, arise from the earth and return to it in time, us included.

Our word dates from before 950 CE, coming to us through the Middle English erthe, Old English eorthe; German erde, Old Norse jǫrth, Danosh jord and Gothic airtha, all springing from the Ancient Saxon eard meaning soil, home, or dwelling. All forms are likely related to the Latin aro, meaning to plough or turn over. Way back there somewhere is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) form *h₁er- meaning ground, soil, land or place.

When we say "earth", we think of the ground under our feet, of gardens, orchards, wooded hills, farm fields and shadowed arroyos. We think of saplings and seeds and roots doing their appointed work in the good dark stuff below. We think of the granite bones of our planet and the fiery heart beating way down deep in its molten core.

In my own case, I am also thinking of the nine bags (150 liters in total) of premium garden soil still to be dug into the veggie patch. Three have already been put down, and the deck is covered with flats of veggies (tomatoes, kale, carrots, leeks, sweet onions and radishes) and herbs waiting to be planted when I get my act together and finish the job. Then there are several floral planters to contend with...

We almost never consider ourselves as elements in the same story, but blood and bones, roots and branches, rivers and rocks, we too are part of the Great Round—we are part of a vast elemental process, one far beyond the scope of our feeble human imaginations. Endlessly befuddled strands in the cosmic web that we are, we forget most of the time that we are part of anything at all. What a benighted lot we are.

Once in a while, the simple truth that we are NOT separate shows up and insists we pay attention. It can happen while dangling half way down a rock face with a camera or seated in a pool of sunlight under a tree in the woods, on a hill somewhere under the summer stars, or the shore of a favorite lake at sunset. A good sunset or a starry, starry night does it for me every time, and occasionally it even happens while I am parked in the waiting room of my local cancer clinic. Moments of kensho (見性) can't be predicted, and nor should they, but I have noticed that they often show up right when they are needed most.

There we are with our feet in the dirt and our heads in the clouds, and a scrap of elemental knowing pops out of the blue. For a moment we understand that we are part of everything around us, and that we belong here, roots, branches, star stuff and every dancing particle. We belong here as much as rivers, mountains, acorns, wild salmon and sandpipers do. Dirt, clouds, moonlight and stardust, it's all good. On mornings when I awaken feeling lonely and fragile and in rough shape physically, that keeps me going. That and Beau and my garden. Oh, and a good cup of tea.

Friday Ramble - Birch Mother in the Wind

Here we are on the cusp between winter and springtime, weary of ice and snowdrifts, craving light and warmth. It is still below freezing much of the time, an icy wind scouring the bare trees and making the branches ring like old iron bells. Perhaps that is to be expected, for springtime is a puckish wight this far north, and after appearing, she sometimes disappears for days and weeks at a time.

For all that, sunny March days have a wonderful way of quieting my thoughts and breathing rhythms, bringing me back to a still and reflective space in the heart of the living world. Far from crowded places and madding crowds, I can just hang out among the trees for a while and replenish my frayed inner directives. When there isn't a coppice or a grove nearby, the edge of a snowy field and a fence post or two will do nicely.

I sat on a log in the woods a few days ago, watching as tatterdemalion scraps and scrolls of birch bark fluttered back and forth in the north wind. The lines etched in the tree's paper were words written in a language I could almost understand when my breath slowed down and my mind became still. When the morning sun slipped out from behind the clouds, beams of sunlight passed through the blowing strands, turning them golden and translucent, making them look for all the world like elemental stained glass.

Wonderful stuff, birch bark. When I touched the old tree in greeting, my fingers came away with a dry springtime sweetness on them that lingered for hours. I tucked a thin folio of bark in the pocket of my parka and inhaled its fragrance all the way home.

Friday Ramble - Winter River

A bitter north wind brushes snow away from the ice on the river, and clouds of displaced snowflakes swirl through the air like confetti. Early morning sunlight paints a burnished golden trail from the other side of the waterway to the place where she is standing. Tomorrow is her nth birthday, and it was her departed soulmate's birthday too. She thinks of him as she shivers on the shoreline, her collar turned up against the bone-chilling commotion around her.

Light flickers through nearby trees and everything sparkles: river, snowdrifts, whiskery branches and frozen weeds along the shore. The scene is uplifting for a crotchety, elderly human poised in December's middling pages. She longs for light, and the sunshine is a shawl across her shoulders as it comes and goes through the clouds and the mist over the river—it's like honey in her cup.

Cattails, sedges and wetland grasses fringe the tributary all the way along, their stalwart toes planted in the frozen mud, and their desiccated stalks rattling and swaying in the wind. The plumes and spikes outlined against the stormy December sky are pleasing when one can actually see them, their artfully curling tops eloquent of something wild and elemental and engaging. So too are the frosted fields, fences and trees on the other side, the cobalt hues of hoarfrost, snow and ice, the pale light glossing the river, the diaphanous veil of cold vapor floating above everything.

There are no caroling birds by the river now, and there is silence for the most part, but she remembers the river singing in its exuberant springtime flowing, last summer's great herons motionless in the reeds at sundown, loons calling across the water in September before they departed. She thinks of Vladimir Nabokov's memoir, "Speak Memory". That might have been a good title for this post written in the depths of winter.

The world around her is a manuscript written in wind and light. How on earth is she going to fit sky, tempest and dancing snow into one 5x7 image?

Friday Ramble - Earth

Earth is a good word for pondering in this shaggy season as we cultivate our gardens and tend the sweet beginnings of the harvest to come.  All things, or at least most things, arise from the earth and return to it in time, us included.

Our word dates from before 950 CE, and it comes to us through the good offices of the Middle English erthe, the Old English eorthe; the German Erde, Old Norse jǫrth, Danosh jord and the Gothic airtha, all springing from the Ancient Saxon eard meaning soil, home, or dwelling. All forms are likely related to the Latin aro, meaning to plough or turn over. Way back is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) form *h₁er- meaning ground, soil, land or place.

When we say "earth", we are most likely thinking of the ground under our feet, of garden plots, orchards, wooded hills, city parks, farm fields and shadowed arroyos.  We may be thinking of wild plums, oak leaves, weeping willows, of the seeds and sleeping roots below our feet, the granite bones of our little blue planet and the fiery heart beating way down deep in its molten core.

We almost never consider ourselves as elements in the same story, but blood and bones, root and branch, rivers and rocks, we are part of a vast elemental process, a cosmic web. Befuddled strands in the web that we are, most of the time we forget that we are part of anything at all. 

Once in a while, the simple truth that we are NOT separate shows up and insists we pay attention. It happens while we are dangling half way up a rock face or seated in a pool of sunlight under a tree in the woods, stretched out on a hill somewhere under the summer stars, or standing on the shore of a favorite lake at sunset. A good sunset or a starry, starry night does it for me every time, and occasionally it even happens while I am parked in the waiting room of my local cancer clinic. Moments of kensho (見性) can't be predicted, and nor should they, but I have noticed that they often show up right when I need them.

There we are with our feet planted in the dirt and our heads in the clouds, not a lofty thought in sight, and out of the blue a scrap of elemental knowing puts in an appearance. In that moment, we know beyond a doubt that we are part of all this and right where we should be. We belong here, our roots, branches, star stuff and every dancing particle - we belong here as much as rivers, mountains, acorns, wild salmon and sandpipers do. Dirt, clouds and stardust, it's all good.