Wordless Wednesday - Evergreen

Standing in the Light

Wordless Wednesday - Evergreen

Wordless Wednesday - Evergreen

Wordless Wednesday - Evergreen

Thursday Poem - To the Rain

Mother rain, manifold, measureless,
falling on fallow, on field and forest,
on house-roof, low hovel, high tower,
downwelling waters all-washing, wider
than cities, softer than sisterhood, vaster
than countrysides, calming, recalling:
return to us, teaching our troubled
souls in your ceaseless descent
to fall, to be fellow, to feel to the root,
to sink in, to heal, to sweeten the seas.

Ursula K. Le Guin, from So Far So Good

Wordless Wednesday - Evergreen (II)

Wordless Wednesday - Evergreen

Thawing, Light, the Shapes of Things to Come

Clear blue sky, sunlight and snow receding in the woods… We are in the midst of a baffling, early January thaw here, and even the birds are confused by such unseasonal toings and froings.

Not so the pines and cedars and spruces in the woods. They still wear cornices of snow and sport throngs of dear little cones that will become whole forests of tiny evergreens next spring. As always, they are assisted in their journey to treehood by legions of village squirrels who shred the cones and scatter seed everywhere.

On our morning walk, I wore my waxed cotton canvas jacket with a sweater under it, and I was toasty warm. Beau actually declined to wear his parka, an unheard of state of affairs for January. The weather will not last of course, and we are surely in for icy cold and deep snow somewhere up the trail, but the light is returning by golly, and we can do this.

Wordless Wednesday - Sprucey

Standing in the Light

Treasure Within

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Sisterhood

Just a Little Green (For Earth Day)

This year, I am letting the forest and trees speak for themselves.

Wordless Wednesday - Evergreen

Wordless Wednesday - Coming to Light

Resting in the Light

The Shape of Things to Come (II)

Wordless Wednesday - The Shape of Things to Come

Let There Be Light

The feeling could be the simple (but indescribable) pleasure that comes of looking at wide expanses of snow punctuated by rocks, trees and hills, nary a building in sight, Zen notions of emptiness and impermanence (anicca), stirred up by the song the north wind sings as it scours the hills, sculpting random waves and abstract shapes as it passes. It could be an unexpressed desire for longing for order and containment, a vague and inchoate yearning for the realms that always seem to beckon beyond summits and slopes and snowy evergreens. It could be the deep, inky shadows that lie over and around everything.

In winter, the eastern Ontario highlands reveal themselves to an intrepid wanderer as they do at no other time during the year. One can trace the rocky bones with her eyes, feel the earth's peaceful sleep and share its slow dreams, sometimes even glimpse the shape of the springtime to come (although spring seems far away on such a day as this). There is music in the wind, and there are astonishing swaths of color in the snow and shadows. Who knew that blue came in so many entrancing shades?

Whatever the feeling is, it leaves me breathless, every single time.