Blue sky yesterday and really warm a couple of days ago. 

Snow and 0 degrees now with more winter predicted.

A trip to the library, time for our inner Shackleton.

"Are your sure everyone else will be wearing them?"

                                                 Shaun

"Difficulties are just things to overcome, after all. "

                                        Ernest Shackleton

"We had seen God in His splendors,

heard the text that Nature renders.

We had reached the naked soul of man."

                                     
                                      Ernest Shackleton

"Now my eyes are turned from the South

to the North, and I want to lead one more

Expedition.

This will be the last... to the North Pole."

                                            
                                          Ernest Shackleton

January 11th  I blogged about the

beautiful Bison Spirit Box I received

and what I might keep in it.

A white buffalo from 100 Horses that

I can take out when I write.

"What is life? It is the flash of a flirefly in the night.

It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime.

It is the little shadow which runs across the grass

and loses itself in the sunset" 

                                                  Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator

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