This beautiful box was a Christmas present from my mother-in-law.

It was described by the woodworker as

Bison Spirit Box

Black Walnut with Spalting

Birch Tile surrounded by African

Padauk Border.

Friendly Forest Products

Of course I had to think of what to keep in it.

And it had to be special.

Some random magpie feathers,

a red tailed hawk feather given me by my brother-in-law.

He retrieved it from the land he sold us for the cabin we hope to build this summer.

A small rose pebble, a magpie dropped this from a roof next to where I was sitting having coffee.

I am not sure what will be next.

"Once I came back to the leaves just as they were falling

Into the rattling of magpies and the waving flights

Through treetops beyond the long field tawny with stubble"

                                                         Gate

                                                                       W.S. Merwin

We seem to be lucky today so far we have not much snow compared

to the rest of Canada. But it does leave me wondering whose white world

should I enter next Emily Bronte's, the Otter's or Stan Roger's?

"COLD in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Sever'd at last by Time's all-severing wave?"                                                             Remembrance                                                    Emily Brontë

“so I came straight off here, through the Wild Wood and the snow! My! it was fine, coming through the snow as the red sun was rising and showing against the black tree-trunks! As you went along in the stillness, every now and then masses of snow slid off the branches suddenly with a flop! making you jump and run for cover. Snow-castles and snow-caverns had sprung up out of nowhere in the night--and snow bridges, terraces, ramparts--I could have stayed and played with them for hours. Here and there great branches had been torn away by the sheer weight of the snow,”

                                                         Wind in the Willows

                                                                    Kenneth Grahame
           

"Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
Tracing one warm line through a land so wide and savage
And make a Northwest Passage to the sea.
Westward from the Davis Strait 'tis there 'twas said to lie
The sea route to the Orient for which so many died;
Seeking gold and glory, leaving weathered, broken bones
And a long-forgotten lonely cairn of stones."

                                      Northwest Passage

                                       Stan Rogers

The evocation of history and memory seen through a snowy curtain

can be pretty effective for me. 

It leads me to appreciate the connections we

form not just to our own past but the past of others through art and literature.

Winter seems  a perfect time for reflection, stories, music and armchair

adventure.

“And then they come with colder feet, and fret

The winds with snow and tuck the streams to sleep

With icy sheet and gleaming coverlet,

And fill the valleys deep”

 Winter

                                 Archibald Lampman

                                   ( an old favourite )

I went for a walk at lunch the other day.

It is hard in the midst of the city to pretend you are in the wild wood.

But sometimes you have help

"This we’ll gladly hear-

a lonely, wild heart

that in limitless freedom

still finds its way to us."

                                 The Loons Head North

                            Tarjei Vesaas

“The Whole landscape drifted away to the north,

To Moose Factory, hundreds of miles, to the pole

And beyond, to the Arctic ends of the earth,”

A Window on the North

R.A.D. Jones

Still winter but not actually that cold, hovering around freezing.

A good excuse to celebrate all things winter in poetry.

which can of course be done mostly from inside.

“If I could walk out into the

cold country

And see the white and innocent dawn arise:”



“If I could walk over stubble

Fields white with frost

And see each separate small beaded blade”

Both quotes tak en from

                    If I Could Walk Out Into A Cold Country

                                              Elizabeth  Brewster

I did not have photo of a deer for my previous post

but when I found these words in R.A.D. Ford’s

wonderful book

A Window On The North, The Ryerson Press 1956,

I knew my neighbourhood could supply ample mountain ash.

And in the garden the fire

Of bright red mountain ash

Is burning. But it cannot warn us.

                       The Golden Grove

                  R.A. D. Ford

                                                   

                                                         

Lacking  a good photo of a deer

but wanting to highlight some poetry

we are back at Christmas.

Neither imagines
the spirit-deer made of thicket shadows,
the deer known only when imagined.

                This Day, Tomorrow, And The Next
                                          Pattiann Rogers

When for too long I don't go deep enough
into the woods to see them, they begin to
enter my dreams. Yes, there they are, in the
pinewoods of my inner life.

                                                                            
                                                                      The Faces of Deer
                                                                                      Mary Oliver

                                                                                   
                                                                    

The deer have crossed the treacherous lake,
And disapper now one by one into the spruce
Woods.  In the silence a bough breakes
Sharply with the weight of ice
and the sound re-echoes from the grey skies.

                                                                                     Thaw in January
                                                                                              R. A. D. Ford