What Falls Away

Sequestered, Week 294 (CCXCIV)

Magnolia in Bloom

Friday Ramble - Bloom

Sunlight, blue skies and fluffy clouds overhead, birdsong in the overstory, avian courtship rites and nest building everywhere - the village is opening out and greening up before our eyes as Beau and I ramble about and peer into hedgerows.

Spring does not make a quiet entrance this far north - she comes over the hill with an exuberant bound, reaches out with a twiggy hand, and everything bursts into bloom. When we went off to the park a few mornings ago, the first narcissus of the season were blooming in a sheltered, sunny alcove, and we both did a little dance. These were the Poet's daffodil (Narcissus poeticus), often identified as the narcissus of ancient times and one of my favorite spring bloomers.

How can this week's word be anything except bloom? The modern word comes to us through the Middle English blo or blome, and Old English blowan meaning to open up and flower lavishly, to glow with health and well-being, to be as dewy and flushed with sunlight as a garden tulip or an early blooming orchid in a wild and wooded place. It all begins with the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) roots bhel-, bhol-, bhlē- bhlō-. In that ancient tongue which is the reconstructed common ancestor of all modern European languages, they mean to grow, swell or unfold, to leaf out or come into flower, to flourish and thrive.

Perhaps a better word for this week would be sex, because that is what springtime's lush colors, alluring fragrances, velvet textures and warbling ballads are about - Mother Earth's madcap dance of exuberance, fertility and fruitfulness. Every species on the planet seems focused on perpetuating its own heady genetic brew, and the collective pleasure in being alive is almost tangible.

Forsaking appointed chores, we potter around in the garden, wander about in village thickets, stare into trees and contemplate the blue sky for long intervals. It's simply a matter of blooming wherever one happens to be planted. Beau is already a master of that splendid art, and his silly old mum is working on it.

Awakening

The eastern Ontario highlands are awakening, wildflowers, ferns and tiny saplings coming up through the bleached and tattered fallen leaves of last autumn. Every sunny alcove in the woods seems to be tenanted by hopeful sprigs of green.

The situation makes one feel like dancing, if it can be done without tumbling ass over teakettle into a prickly thicket along the trail. An exuberant lurching about is probably the best we can do, but we (Beau and I) just have to express our gratitude to the Old Wild Mother for giving us such a sublime morning in May.

Three cheers for Mama. She certainly knows how to put on a show.

Sequestered, Week 293 (CCXCIII)

Happy Beltane (May Day)

For Beltane (or May Day)

This is the eve of Beltane (or May Day) in the northern hemisphere. The word is Scots Gaelic in origin and marks the beginning of summer. Below the equator, this is the eve of Samhain (also Scots Gaelic) meaning "summer's end". As we northerners drift toward warmth and light, our southern kin are drifting toward the dark half of the year.

Nights are are still cool, and it will be another week or two until full colonies of bloodroot are up and blooming, but early specimens lift their gold and white heads in protected nooks here and there in the woods. In other years, there were wild yellow orchids blooming, but it will be a while before they put in an appearance, soon to be followed by trout lilies and columbines.

Bloodroot flowers are breathtaking, and the shy white blooms with their golden centers are dear to my heart. They are something of a seasonal marker for me. Encountering this one glowing in its flickering, stone-warmed alcove, I felt like kneeling and kissing the good dark earth where the flower made its home—it was that perfect. Ignoring painful and protesting knees, down I went in the dead leaves and stayed there for quite a while, nose to nose with the dear little wonder and happy as a clam. Getting to my feet again was quite an undertaking.

The interval was one of the wild epiphanies I love so much, especially in springtime when the north woods are just coming to life. Call it a moment of kensho, one of those fleeting intervals of grace, quiet knowing and connection that I like to call "aha" moments. Forget the fancy stuff - this is the ground of my being. As long as I can spend time with trees and rocks and wildflowers, I can handle the big life "stuff", most of the time anyway. Add lakes, loons, cormorants, herons, sunsets and full moons to the equation, please. Also Canada geese, swans and cranes.

Happy Beltane (or May Day), everyone. May there be light and blooming and fragrance in your own precious life, in your particular corner of the great wide world. Wherever you make your home on the hallowed earth, may all good things come to you at this turning of the wheel in the Great Round.

Sequestered, Week 292 (CCXCII)

Maples in the Pink

Thursday Poem - Bio

I am a leaf-dance in the woods.
I am the green gaze of the ocean.
I am a cloud-splitter in the sky.
I arrived robed in red
out of nowhere and nothing.
I whisper between pages.
I disappear in the painting.
I rest between musical notes.
I awaken among strangers
in a country I never imagined.
I am timbales and bells,
a parade under your window.
I am the riddle I cannot solve,
hands on the clock's face,
seven crows on a branch.
I am the one whose footfall
changes the pattern of stars.

Dolores Stewart, from The Nature of Things

(reprinted here with the late poet's kind permission)

Friday Ramble - On Our Way

Beyond our windows this morning are clouds, drifting fog and a forlorn copse of skeletal maples and ashes doing their best to put out leaves, catkins and flowers. Alas, springtime is late this time around, and the tree people have a long way to go before they leaf out fully, but they are working on it.

In the street, a cold wind cavorts in the gutters, ruffles dead leaves and other detritus like playing cards. It eases around the corner of the little blue house in the village and sets the copper wind bells on the deck in exuberant motion. So ardent is the wind's caress that sometimes the bells are almost parallel to the ground.

The air is warmer than the still frozen ground below, and the meeting of the two elements stirs up something magical. Somewhere in the early murk, a few robins sing their pleasure, and a woodpecker (probably a pileated from the volume of its hammering) is driving its formidable beak into an old birch. Now and again, he (or possibly she) pauses, takes a few deep breaths and gives an unfettered laugh that carries for quite a distance. Even a bird in the fog, it seems, knows the value of taking a break from its work now and again, just breathing in and out for a minute or two and giving voice to a cackle of raucous amusement.

I can't see either the caroling robins or my whomping woodpecker, but that is all right. Their voices are welcome musical elements in a morning that is all about the nebulous, the wondrous, the mysterious and unseen.

In the kitchen, coffee is in progress and and a little Mozart (The Magic Flute) fills the air, but something more is needed. Miracle of miracles, yellow crocus are blooming in the protected southern corner of a neighbor's garden. The little dears are lit from within, and I swear, they light up the whole village.

Little by Little, Returning

And so the dance begins. It starts with a pair of geese, not a skein or a flock or a "v", just two magnificent Canadas paddling in a pool of melted river in the sunlight.

It continues with a Sharp-shinned Hawk etching wide circles in the sky over the same stretch of river and emitting a short, sharp, joyous cry now and then.

A drowsy groundhog perches on a fence post and looks around in disbelief. No doubt he (or she) is appalled by all the snow still on the ground and is considering going back to sleep for several weeks. There should be much more grass showing by now.

In a nearby spinney, three glossy deer shuffle their feet and drink in the morning, their breath sending up clouds of steam in the cold air.

Not far away, juvenile male turkeys (jakes) are strutting their stuff and proclaiming their superiority, gobbling, puffing up their plumage, spreading their tails and dragging their wings along the ground—they are doing the turkey version of what I like to call "the antler dance". The birds are too young to mate, but they are practising their courtship and dominance displays for next year and (no doubt), they are being critiqued by their assembled fellows. The performances are hilarious. 

Sequestered, Week 257 (CCLVII)

Hallelujah, They're Back!

Friday Ramble - Melt

This week's word has been around since before 900, coming to us through the Middle English melten, Old English meltan, mealt and gemæltan all meaning to liquify and (or) digest. It's cognate with the Old Norse melta and Greek méldein meaning much the same thing, then the Proto Germanic meltanan and West Saxon gemyltan meaning "to make liquid". All or most of the forms in existence spring from the Proto Indo-European (PIE) root form meld meaning "softness" or "to render soft". The study of word origins is a fine thing.

Strange as it may seem, the word malt is also kin to this week’s ramble offering. In the malting process, barley is soaked, softened and drained to release enzymes used in brewing beer, and the result is called malt (or wort). The curious relation between melt and malt can be explained simply by the fact that both involve softening. On the other hand, the similar sounding verb meld "to dissolve, blend or mingle" originates in the Old High German melden, "to announce" and the Old English meldian, "to make known", and it is not kin. The term is used mainly in card games, particularly canasta.

In recent days, we watched hopefully as icicles depending from the eaves of the little blue house in the village melted away, little by little. We grow some fabulous icicles up here, and a favorite springtime exercise is wandering about with the camera and photographing them as they dwindle at their lofty moorings, turn skinny and then disappear into the earth, drop by shining drop.

There are tiny worlds too numerous to imagine in the icicles dangling over our heads and in the streams below our feet. The greater world around us and its multitudes of miniscule universes are complete within themselves and teeming with life and enchantment, all wrapped up together and happy with the arrangement.

Sometimes melting ice holds the doddering photographer and her camera. Other times, it is filled with sky, clouds, bare trees and tiny sprigs of emerging greenery—all are expressions of this madcap season when vibrant new life is coming into being. The Old Wild Mother (Earth) creates finer "stuff" than I shall ever be able to dream up, but that is quite all right. I just wander around and chronicle her doings with lens and notebook and a perpetually stunned expression.

Happy Vernal Equinox (Ostara)

For the Vernal Equinox (Ostara)

Tomorrow marks the Vernal Equinox or Ostara, one of two times in the calendar year (the other being the Autumn Equinox or Mabon) when the Earth and her unruly children hover in perfect balance for a brief interval.

Humans have nothing to do with the origins of this day, a pivotal astronomic point ordained by the natural order of things in the cosmos. On both equinoxes, the Sun is right above the equator, and its annual pathway (the ecliptic) intersects with the celestial equator. Day and night are equal length. We like to say that the Sun is passing over the equator, but it is we and our planet who are in motion, not the magnificent star at the center of our universe.

If I lived further south, tomorrow might be a day of greening and enchantment, a day when Eostre, the old Teutonic goddess of greening and fertility, wanders wild places with her arms full of spring blooms, bestowing blessings on everything she sees. Flowers would spring up in her footsteps as she passed, and she would be attended by hares, her special animal,. The air would be filled with birdsong, with the heady fragrance of rich dark earth and wild springtime herbs.

Alas, the only snowdrops blooming here at the moment are those in a glass jar in my study. It will be a week or two until Lady Spring turns up and decides to stay for a while, but rumors of her imminent arrival persist. It has been a long winter this time around, and Eostre can't show up too soon for me. Our winter birds feel the same. Every feathered visitor to our sleeping garden seems to be declaring its lofty status as a messenger from the sacred, a harbinger of abundance and new life.

In the wee hours of this morning, Beau and I went outside into the garden for a few minutes, and a cold going it was. As we shivered in the star spangled darkness and looked up, it seemed to us that the waning moon bore more than a passing resemblance to a great cosmic egg, a perfect expression of this turning of the wheel with its verdant motifs of warmth, light and new life coming into being.

There is blooming in our thoughts, but it is too cold here for outdoor celebrations, and our festivities are indoors for the most part, a festive lunch with a dear friend, the exchange of gifts, tea and an afternoon of happy natter. Pancakes, berries, whipped cream and local maple syrup are on the menu this year. Yum.

Happy Equinox! Blessings of the season to one and all.

In the Woods, Sweetness

Thursday Poem - Another Spring

The seasons revolve and the years change

With no assistance or supervision.

The moon, without taking thought,

Moves in its cycle, full, crescent, and full.

The white moon enters the heart of the river;

The air is drugged with azalea blossoms;

Deep in the night a pine cone falls;

Our campfire dies out in the empty mountains.

The sharp stars flicker in the tremulous branches;

The lake is black, bottomless in the crystalline night;

High in the sky the Northern Crown

Is cut in half by the dim summit of a snow peak.

O heart, heart, so singularly

Intransigent and corruptible,

Here we lie entranced by the starlit water,

And moments that should each last forever

Slide unconsciously by us like water.

Kenneth Rexroth

(Translation of a poem by Tu Fu)