Let There Be Blue

That dazzling blue . . . Sky, clouds, fields and trees, are rendered in exquisite shades of blue, and when the sun touches them, they sparkle like a dragon's hoard. A dragon's hoard composed only of blue stones that is: topaz, sapphire, tourmaline, turquoise, tanzanite, labradorite and lapis lazuli, amethyst too. The sheer "blueness" of this snowy day in January's middling pages is a marvel.

When I come here, I let the wind and the light and the stillness enfold me, and I just breathe in and out for a while. This is the place of my belonging, magical in every season, but particularly so in winter. An old friend, it quiets a weary, aching heart.

On the Edge of the Snowy Woods

Out of the White Stuff, a Reminder

For all our weariness of the long white season and its trappings, it gifts us with a surprise now and then, occasionally something like this morning's image.

Pleasing bits of gnarly enchantment protrude from the snow now and again, and they are wonderful to see, powerful reminders of the vanished season's warmth and light, its glorious coloration and fragrance. They always seem to awaken something within, and I am reminded of a quote from Albert Camus. “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer."

The dried fronds, wands and seed heads emerging from the snow and coming back into the light are wonderfully bendy, and they have curving, sinuous shapes. There is just a hint of the vibrant hues they once wore. Perhaps their appearance out of the white stuff is a sign that winter is "getting old" and warmer days are not far off? We perch in towering snowdrifts and wave at other villagers going by. We watch for signs of winter departing. We think about springtime and nesting owls, about maple syrup gathering, snowdrops and songbirds. We rattle and creak and go on.

Perceptions totter and fade, and they take on strange shapes in late winter. At this time of the year, we need small gifts from the Old Wild Mother (Earth) and reminders of her indwelling wonder and magic, her infinite capacity for change. This morning's aide-mémoire was just a strand of last summer's common tansy poking out of a snowdrift, but it was poignant stuff, and I needed to see it. There has been a lot of wind around here this winter, and I am surprised this one was still standing. 

This evening there was a knock at the door, and I answered it to find a neighbor and his young sons standing on the threshold with their shovels. It snowed today, and the kids thought they would clear my driveway but wanted to ask permission before they started to fling the white stuff about with their father.  That is what living in the village is all about. We watch out for each other. We take care of each other. In these dark and troubling times, that is something to cherish and crow about. 

Dancing With the North Wind

Beau and I paused in the lee of a big old rock (a glacier dropstone) in the woods yesterday in an effort to get out of the bitter north wind for a while, but our strategy was an exercise in futility. There was no shelter to be found.

Boreas (god of the north wind, winter and snowstorms) howled through the whiskery trees, gulleys and wooded alcoves, crept under our woolly hats, up our sleeves, down our collars and gusted into our eyes. The way the old guy was blowing, it is a wonder any snow was left on the ground, but snow there was and plenty of it.

We were chilled to the bone and soaking wet when we arrived home, but cheerful after a ramble in the woods and the fresh, frosty air. Chattering teeth? Oh, yes.

Friday Ramble - Adrift in Winter Mind

Ice, and snow are everywhere on the trailing edges of a calendar year, and eyes and camera linger lovingly on it all. It is astonishing what can be seen right from one's window on a winter morning in December. The village is a changed place, a sea of pristine whiteness beautiful to look at, grueling to move out of streets, lanes, driveways and cobblestones.

Frost glosses trees in the village and sparkles on our window panes at first light. Here and there, ice forms cornices and dangles artlessly from eaves, roof lines and wind chimes. As glossy as hard candy, it sheathes roads, driveways and cobblestones, and when the winter sun touches them, the layers reveal themselves as lacy blankets draped over streets, sleeping hills and fields. Lovely stuff, ice, whether seen in an urban setting or glittering on branches in the snow-drowned countryside.

Everything around us has a story to tell. Tales from the trailing edges, liminal intervals and seasonal turnings of our lives help us to learn and grow and thrive, to exercise the wonder and connection that is our birthright. All this simply from contemplating a few icicles dangling outside the kitchen window? I am adrift in winter mind, as I always seem to be at this time of the year. The paucity of daylight perhaps?

I think of these days before Yule as being qarrtsiluni days. That lovely Inuit word with its bewildering arrangement of consonants means "sitting together in the dark, waiting for something wonderful to happen". Winter's fruitful darkness is a doorway through which we pass to ready ourselves for an exuberant blooming somewhere up the trail. Beyond these dark turnings at the postern of the old calendar year, light, warmth and wonder await us.

Snowy Mornings

There is a hush to our favorite walking places on early December mornings. The village is a different place than it was, only a few days ago. 

Snow seems to muffle everything in the park, the footsteps of early walkers, squirrels scrambling through whiskery branches and running along the frozen creek, dogs barking in the unleashed area on the other side of the woods. Sometimes it is so quiet that one can hear snowflakes falling on the old trees along the steep trail up the hill. At the top of the rugged incline is the alcove where the Beech Mother and her daughters make their home, and we always stop to greet them.

Then there is the matter of making trail. It is difficult to come upon a trail blanketed in freshly fallen snow, no footprints on it at all, and know how to proceed. Do we go forward and defile the pristine avenue in front of us with our footprints, or do we pause to admire the snowy expanse for a while, then find another way through the woods? This morning, we found another way.

There is wild magic here on winter mornings and no mistake. Shameful to disrupt its workings with our bumbling about in the lovely, unmarked white stuff.

Sequestered, Week 195 (CXCV)

Wordless Wednesday - Snow Day

Sequestered, Week 154 (CLIV)

All Together Now, Winter and Spring

Happy April! Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.

Wordless Wednesday - Emergence

Another Snow Day

Snow Day

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.

Snow Day

Wordless Wednesday - Adorned

Wordless Wednesday - Another Snow Day

On the Edge of the Woods

On the Edge

The Sisterhood in Snow and Light