My wife and I  have a basement full of

Halloween decorations. In the past we hosted

pumpkin carving parties, however the last few

years we have not done much, so I thought it was

time to sacrifice a pumpkin and fight with a few

strings of lights.

( I lost only the spiders are lighting up )

The squirrels have gone crazy for the pumpkin

seeds, the jays are unimpressed.

Also since I am a huge fan of H. P. Lovecraft and have

way too many Arkham House books, Cthulhu toys etc.

I thought in this spooky season nothing would be more

appropriate than a quote from the old gentleman

himself. From the story "A Picture in the House"

an over wrought story but a great opening. 

"Searchers after horror haunt strange, far places. For them are the catacombs

of Ptolemais, and the carven mausolea of the nightmare countries. They

climb to the moonlit towers of ruined Rhine castles, and falter down black

cobwebbed steps beneath the scattered stones of forgotten cities in Asia.

The haunted wood and the desolate mountain are their shrines, and they

linger around the sinister monoliths on uninhabited islands. But the true

epicure in the terrible, to whom a new thrill of unutterable ghastliness is

the chief end and justification of existence, esteems most of all the ancient,

lonely farmhouses of backwoods New England; for there the dark elements

of strength, solitude, grotesqueness, and ignorance combine to form the

perfection of the hideous.

      Most horrible of all sights are the little unpainted wooden houses

remote from travelled ways, usually squatted upon some damp,

grassy slope or leaning against some gigantic outcropping of rock.

Two hundred years and more they have leaned or squatted there,

while the vines have crawled and the trees have swelled and spread.

They are almost hidden now in lawless luxuriances of green and

guardian shrouds of shadow; but the small-paned windows still

stare shockingly, as if blinking through a lethal stupor which wards

off madness by dulling the memory of unutterable things."

The Picture in the House

H.P. Lovecraft

Since my return from Washington I have been

looking at photos of some of the great paintings

we saw, I was wondering if I should post some

details of the beautiful landscapes we saw at the

National Museum of American Art.

I had just begun to reread a wonderful book, 

Edwward Hirsch's How to Read a Poem and

Fall in love with Poetry, when I opened it and

saw this quote from Emerson's journals. I knew

I wanted to use the paintings and the quote

together. I did not record all the artist and titles

of the painting we saw. The last by Moran was

one of my favorites

Below a detail from

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone

Thomas Moran

"I dreamed that I floated at will in the great Ether,

and I saw this world floating also not far off, but

diminished to the size of an apple. Then an angel

took it in his hand & brought it to me and said

'This must thou eat.' And I ate the world"

                      Ralph Waldo Emerson

As  I mentioned earlier this week we just spent two

weeks in Ontario and Washington DC. So we

spent a lot of time in museums and galleries.

One place I wanted to visit was the National

Museum of American Art as I especially wanted

to see works by Thomas Hart Benton and

the Hudson River School however we were

not expecting the beautiful exhibit of folk art.

My wife did find the comment in the visitor

book that " Some of this stuff looks like any one

could have made it " amusing. I though a lot of it

was beyond my skill, patience and imagination.

Rather than ending with a quote from a poem

I thought I would end with a quote posted in the

museum.

When we returned from Washington DC we knew

we were probably leaving blooming roses and trickling

fountains, so this was no surprise.

However it did rain the last two days in DC and

the tamaracks have never looked lovelier.

"Why should you think that beauty lies

Only under distant skies:

When maples softly sway and bend

And robins greet you as a  friend,

Why should you long for palms, or sigh

To see strange rivers slipping by:

You, for whom meadow brooks run clear,

And little paths are known and dear?

Why should you think the moon may be

More golden over some far sea:

And where will you find hills to roam

As lovely as the hills of home?

What can earth give you, near or far,

But wind and sea and dawn and star;

With all of these beside your door

Why should you cross the world for more?"

                                          For Beauty Near

                                              Floris Clark McLean

My wife and I have been out of town for two weeks.

The first week we visited my family in Ontario

the second week we went to Washington DC

where she had a symposium. We mostly went

to art galleries so I do not have a lot of nature

shots from the trip but I will be posting some

photos in the next couple of weeks. In the

meantime here are some shots from the

area behind my office taken just before I left.

University Research Park

09-27 and 09-28

"Crow turned the words into a reservoir, collecting the water.
The water turned into an earthquake, swallowing the reservoir.

The earthquake turned into a hare and leaped for the hill
Having eaten Crow's words.

Crow gazed after the bounding hare
Speechless with admiration. "

                                                                                       Crow Goes Hunting
                                                                                                  Ted Hughes

"Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,"

                    
Mindful

                            Mary Oliver

"Uneasily the leaves fall at this season

forgetting what to do or where to go;

the red amnesiacs of autumn

drifting thru the graveyard forest."

  Pause

                 Al Purdy

" The world in its great mystery

Was hidden by my dream.

Today I made no claim:

I dream of what is here, the tree

Beside the falling stream,

The stone, the light upon the stone;

And day and dream are one."

     A Timbered Choir 1989 VIII

Wendell Berry

In 1975 my brother gave me a copy of

"In Wildness is the Preservation of the World"

A Sierra Club Book with photos by Eliot Porter

who also selected quotes from Thoreau to

accompany the text. I still have the book.

The cover had a photo of leaves

floating on water amid reflections. So this

fall I have been inspired to look for that

combination when out for a walk.

"The West of which I speak is but another name

for the Wild; and what I have been preparing to

 say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the

world. Every tree sends its fibres forth in search

of the Wild. The cities import it at any price.

Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and

wilderness come the tonics and barks which

brace mankind."

                       Walking

                         Henry David Thoreau

"For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a

world older and more complete than ours, they move

finished and complete, gifted with the extension

of the senses we have lost or never attained,

living by voices we shall never hear. They are not

brethren, they are not underlings: they are other

nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life

and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of

the earth."

                         The Outermost House

                                  Henry Beston