Red-Necked Grebe by the grid road.

Above us, stars. 

Beneath us, constellations.

Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies

like a snowflake falling on water.

Flying by Night

Ted Kooser

link to the full poem here,

https://www.tedkooser.net/excerpts/flyingAtNight.html

Clouds

One thing I love about being at the farm and especially at our cabin just up the grid is the sky. Clouds and the weather in general just fascinate me. So here are some photos taken at the farm the night before we left to return to Calgary. 

"There is no thunder in her hair,
upon her lips no rain,
yet world and weather through that door
have come alive again,"

from Six Songs from a Play, First Song
by Patrick Anderson

Summer slough. At the cabin

"Human existence is girt round with mystery: the narrow region of our experience is a small island in the midst of a boundless sea, which at once awes our feelings and stimulates our imagination by its vastness and it's obscurity. To add to the mystery, the domain of our earthly existence is not only an island in infinite space, but also in infinite time. The past and the future are alike shrouded from us: we neither know the origin of anything which is, nor, its final destination. If we feel deeply interested in knowing that there are myriads of worlds at an immeasurable, and to our faculties inconceivable, distance from us in space; if we are eager to discover what little we can about these worlds, and when we cannot know what they are, can never satiate ourselves with speculating on what they may be; is it not a matter of far deeper interest to us to learn, or even to conjecture, from whence came this nearer world which we inhabit; what cause or agency made it what it is, and on what powers depend its future fate?"

Three Essays on Religion, 1874
John Stuart Mills

Home again cont

“And this is what I learned: that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness—the beauty and the mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books—can re-dignify the worst-stung heart.”

From Upstream: Selected Essays

by Mary Oliver

I wanted to post some shots from the trip home. The roads were good and there was a lot of hoar frost transforming the landscape. We also saw lots of animals most I did not get photos of. We saw Pronghorns which I mentioned last post. A deer had just crossed the road as we went through. We also saw Snowy Owl, a coyote, partridges and two unusual sights, the first a Red fox amid a cloud of crows. The second a Bald Eagle with Magpies. I thought in both cases they were being mobbed but Helen though they had a been feeding from the same road kill. It was a vey blue and white day.

The combination of moving car and moving animal rarely make for a stellar photo. But I have including it because I was really surprised to see a Bald Eagle here. We were heading towards the tiny badlands town of Dorothy Alberta at the time. I did not realize that this portion of the Red Deer River Valley had Bald Eagles.

Lives and planets

"The lyrics of those half-forgotten songs, 
—Some of them poignant, some of them witty— 
Brimming with the melody of passage; 
One feels the wind that blows the soul about, 
Repeating its inscrutable message; 
And as night falls, one sees the stars come out.

I found myself beneath a canopy 
Of scenes left out of someone else’s life"

What The Stars Meant
by John Koethe

Wednesday night Helen set up her telescope on the porch, we were able to see Jupiter and the four Galilean moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. How cool is that?

Hafford Road Trip Blue-Winged Teal

"And life seems smaller, placed against the background   

Of this story with the empty, moral quality of an expansive   

Gesture made up out of trees and clouds and air."

The Late Wisconsin Spring

On the same trip, an American avocet.

The dominant feelings are the blue sky, and the year.   

—Memories of other seasons and the billowing wind;   

The light gradually altering from difficult to clear

from The Late Wisconsin Spring

by John Koethe

One of a number of handsome Northern Shoveler ducks seen on the trip to Hafford.

And if you are near Hafford (even if you have to detour a bit) stop for soup and a sandwich at the A&M Bistro/Bakery, and get Cinnamon Buns to take home.

http://www.bakeryinhaffordsk.ca/

 "I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

from The Peace of Wild Things
Wendell Berry

Trip to Shellbrook for drinking water pump ( & breakfast) deer, hawk, blackbird amid blue sky day. Deer Crossing Hwy.

Faithful Readers will see my title as a clumsy homage to the Billy Collins poem of my previous post.

This young deer took its time in crossing the highways but the vehicles in both lanes had time to stop.  It did look a bit seedy, possibly it is still shedding, it has been cool the last few nights.

"But that beneath my life lies something intricate and real and 
Nearly close enough to touch. I live it, and I know I should explain it, 
Only I know I can't—it's just an image of my life that came to me one day, 
And which remained long after the delight it brought had ended." 

from Early Morning in Milwaukee

by John Koethe

A Day in the Life

"We risk our eyes

every day; they celebrate; they dance

and flirt over this offered treasure.

"Be alive," the land says. "Listen-

this is your time, your world, your pleasure.""

from Crossing Our Campground

by William Stafford

Yesterday I worked around the cabin taking out some grass, to discourage ticks and moving some plants. Despite bug repellant, changing my clothes after a tick check, a shower at the farm, more tick checks, scanning the sheets with a flashlight before bed, I found I had been bitten by two ticks. Helen has ordered me an anti-tick outfit, I believe it is a plastic buddle with waldos. She has also put the kibosh on some of my landscaping plans, I am not arguing. Ticks only became a problem here a few years ago when the winters warmed up. I was getting a bit discouraged, thank god the dragonflies showed up about four days ago.

Then this morning I woke to this out the front window.

We went to Shellbrook for breakfast and shopping.

On the way there were ducks. A Canvasback and 

some Scaups.

An old cabin. This looks similar to the homestead cabin

on the farm which was built about 1911-1912. Quite the

place to spend a Saskatchewan winter with the family.

The view from Arnies Grill, the wonderful restaurant in Shellbrook.

A prairie town sleeps under a blue sky. 

Nice but we really need rain.

A quick stop for gas, almost there.

Road Trip # 1

"Which of the horses

we passed yesterday whinnied

all night in my dreams?

I want that one."

from Stories from Kansas

by William Stafford

Is this the lineback dun so beloved of Louis L'Amour characters?

Trip to the cabin

"As I sit for a while after breakfast

reading a few pages

with a shadowing sense

that I am stealing the moment

from something else

that I ought to be doing

so the pleasure of stealing is part of it"

from Theft of Morning

W.S. Merwin

Our trip was good, the south is very dry however, before Kindersley we saw a white dust devil from one of the salt flats. It rained between Kindersley and Bigger which was a blessing, The young lady at the hotel told me it was the first rain they had had this spring after not much snow. The cabin came thru the winter in great shape, no mice got in. We have seen lots of ducks and I have been able to get some nice photos, a real contrast with last year when my cataracts were so bad. I have already found three ticks, one on Whateley and two on me so I will have to use lots of bug spray and keep after the grass. I am also getting a haircut.  

"All these years behind windows

With blind crosses sweeping the tables

And myself tracking over empty ground

Animals I never saw"

from The Animals

by W.S. Merwin

"The seasons, like greater tides, ebb and flow across the continents."

Edwin Way Teale

Since we got the snow in Sept. at the cabin, we seemed to enter directly into winter with over 30+ cm or about a foot of snow in 24 hours earlier this week in Calgary. We spoke to a gallery owner Saturday who lives in the foothills and she got over twice that. But before we left the cabin the beauty of autumn was really becoming evident. One thing that really impressed us was the thousands of snow geese that passed over head or lay like drifts in the fields. And when I think of of the seasons I think of Edwin Way Teale and his four book series The America Seasons documenting 75,000 miles travelled across America to follow the changing seasons. Although at present I do wonder whether Autumn Across America or Wandering Through Winter is the more appropriate volume.

" For man, autumn is a time of harvest, of gathering together. For nature, it is a time of sowing, of scattering abroad."
Edwin Way Teale

"These were the lonely hours, when at last she could let down from the work of the day, when she could stand there and feel the wind touch her hair, when she could look at the bright, silent stars, and hear a coyote’s plaintive cry come from far out on the plain."

from Conagher: 
by Louis L'Amour

Evening Drive

"For the texture of this life is like a field of stars 

In which the past is hidden in a tracery 

Looming high above our lives, a tangle of bright moments"

from A Substitute for Time

by John Koethe

Today, Friday, Sept 7th, Sandhill Cranes

"In a world which is its own motto: 

The bright colors of the trees 

And the mild brilliance of the mind 

In autumn, and the yearlong helplessness. 

Each thing speaks for itself 

But with so much room around every word"

from Objects in Autumn

by John Koethe

"a flock, a body, the birds

moving, moving the air, moving

the bank behind the house, the snow

sieved by sun and rain, the

seeds, the fallout from trees, hedge"

from Suddenly

by D.G. Jones

After a trip to an art exhibit in Rosthern, 

we had a lovely lunch as well, (see the

b & w photos,). We crossed the mighty

North Saskatchewan River on the 

Wingard ferry which is free, holds up to 

six cars and is a trip of several minutes.

Viewing these photos I think of other

journeys.

"Imagine that you see the wretched 

strangers,

Their babies at their backs and their poor 

luggage,

Plodding to the ports and coasts for 

transportation,

And that you sit as kings in your desires . . .

What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had 

taught

How insolence and strong hand should 

prevail,

How order should be quelled; and by this 

pattern

Not one of you should live an aged man,

For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,

With self same hand, self reasons, and self 

right,

Would shark on you, and men like 

ravenous fishes

Would feed on one another."

from the New Yorker, If you Prick Us, 

July 10 & 17, 2017

article by Stephen. Greenblatt, 

The quote's possible attribution, an

unpublished work by William Shakespeare 

from a play on Thomas More