Snow with Coyote

Snow this morning, At 6:30 I was just finishing shovelling 

when a coyote trotted past me down the centre of the 
street. It is -15, wc -23 but it did not feel that cold.


“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,”

from Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

 

"Nothing There: The Late Poetry of John Koethe" by Robert Hahn

 "And that is why artists keep trying—to speak to something beyond the confines of the page, to move the stars to pity."

from "Nothing There: The Late Poetry of John Koethe" by Robert Hahn

https://kenyonreview.org/reviews/the-swimmer-by-john-koethe-738439/

 I am thinking about poetry and that can only be a good thing.

Hoping for the best in the New Year

 

"We know

the current is there, hidden; and there

are comings and goings from miles away

that hold the stillness exactly before us.

What the river says, that is what I say."

from Ask Me by William Stafford

Reader Rock Garden

"the shadow of
a mist shall yet
with but the time
this granite fret"

from Sky Spindrift
by James Wreford

We were very daring and went to the Reader Rock garden to see the flowers and have lunch with a friend. It was nice to experience some semblance of normality.

https://www.calgary.ca/csps/parks/locations/se-parks/reader-rock-garden.html

Alaska Days

"When we contemplate the whole globe as one great dewdrop, 

striped and dotted with continents and islands, flying through 

space with other stars all singing and shining together as one, 

the whole universe appears as an infinite storm of beauty"

                  from Travels in Alaska

                       by John Muir

In 2015 My wife and I took a round-trip cruise from Vancouver B.C. to Alaska with her mother. We decided that cruise culture was not for us, I likened it to going on vacation and not leaving the hotel. However the scenery was beautiful, and the staff unfailingly pleasant. So we were distressed when we observed how poorly the crews of the cruise ships were treated during the early stages of the pandemic. I think during this period of minimal travel that I will look back at some of the photos from that trip and remember some of those experiences. 

Imaginary Journeys in isolation

"Suddenly Tom’s talk left the woods and went leaping up the young stream, over bubbling waterfalls, over pebbles and worn rocks, and among small flowers in close grass and wet crannies, wandering at last up on to the Downs. They heard of the Great Barrows, and the green mounds, and the stone-rings upon the hills and in the hollows among the hills. Sheep were bleating in flocks. Green walls and white walls rose. There were fortresses on the heights. Kings of little kingdoms fought together, and the young Sun shone like fire on the red metal of their new and greedy swords. There was victory and defeat; and towers fell, fortresses were burned, and flames went up into the sky. Gold was piled on the biers of dead kings and queens; and mounds covered them, and the stone doors were shut; and the grass grew over all. Sheep walked for a while biting the grass, but soon the hills were empty again. A shadow came out of dark places far away, and the bones were stirred in the mounds. Barrow-wights walked in the hollow places with a clink of rings on cold fingers, and gold chains in the wind. Stone rings grinned out of the ground like broken teeth in the moonlight." (LOTR)

Venice, Oltre il Giardino

“One of the saddest realities is that we never know when our lives are at their peak. Only after it is over and we have some kind of perspective do we realize how good we had it a day, a month, five years ago. ”
― Jonathan Carroll

This week I heard a noise on the porch, luckily the dogs were having a nap with Helen. When I looked out the window a black squirrel was walking along the porch railing with a huge mouth/armful of grass before leaping into the spruce. So renos are in the air. 

Venice Sept 2019 Reflections

“White swan of cities slumbering in thy nest…
White phantom city, whose untrodden streets
Are rivers, and whose pavements are the shifting
Shadows of the palaces and strips of sky.”


Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Red-Necked Grebe on nest, early summer.

"And how many hours have I spent in watching the reflections on the water? When the air is still, then so is the surface of the river. Then it holds a perfectly silent image of the world that seems not to exist in this world. Where, I have asked myself, is this reflection? It is not on the top of the water, for if there is a little current the river can slide frictionlessly and freely beneath the reflection and the reflection does not move. Nor can you think of it as resting on the bottom of the air. The reflection itself seems a plane of no substance, neither water nor air. It rests, I think, upon quietness. Things may rise from the water or fall from the air, and, without touching the reflection, break it. It disappears. Without going anywhere, it disappears."

from Jayber Crow: A Novel
by Wendell Berry

"When you get older, it is a bit like being an adolescent – every day is different. It is a strange thing. You are proceeding into the unknown, which is different from growing up and proceeding into the known."

Susan Hiller

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/nov/15/susan-hiller-interview-self-doubt-is-always-present

“Sometimes you can tell a large story with a tiny subject.” 

– Eliot Porter

Garden pond at the farm.

"2 A.M. moonlight. The train has stopped

out in a field. Far off sparks of light from a town,

flickering coldly on the horizon.

As when a man goes so deep into his dream"

from Track

by Tomas Transformer

"Within the last few decades, since the complete triumph

of industrialization, the image of our earth's surface has been

entirely altered and rearranged; every city and landscape in

the world has suffered monstrous change and a corresponding

revolution has swept the souls and minds of men.

In the years since the outbreak of the world war this

development has been so rapid that one can without

exaggeration announce the death and destruction 

of that culture in which we older people were educated

as children and which seemed to us at that time eternal

and immutable."

 from Our Age's Yearning for a Philosophy of Life 

1926-1927 by Hermann Hesse

Hermann Hesse, My Belief, Essays on Life and Art

I have dipped into this book hundreds of times, simply to 

read, not necessarily taking much from it, often not 

finishing the essay. So why have I placed this book by my

bed for so many years? In these essays Hesse demonstrates

that there is a life of the mind. That someone read and 

thought about our intellectual history, our spirituality, our 

morality. He mulled over what he has read and heard and 

experienced in an attempt to understand his place in the

world and that of his fellows. And I suspect this is a 
worthwhile pursuit, an subject that everyone would 
be better off reflecting on and working through.

" Over there the pale snow lay in a different fashion

than on my roof, over there the beech forest and the

black pine trees were indescribably beautiful and 

reserved in a way I never saw in my neighborhood;

perhaps God Himself walked over there along the 

slopes, and whoever met Him there could touch Him

and speak to Him and look closely into His eyes."

from At Year's End 1904

              by Hermann Hesse

Reflections

"NOW DO U UNDERSTAND WHAT HEAVEN IS

IT IS THE SURROUND OF THE LIVING"

The Changing Light at Sandover

by James Merrill

" but her foundations were set upon the holy hills and her spires touched heaven"

from Gaudy Night

br Dorothy Sayers

Ducks

"What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left.

O let them be left, wildness and wet:

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet."

                           Gerald Manley Hopkins (1881)

" Fields around are yellowing into harvest

nestlings and fingerlings are sky and water borne"

from Wilderness Gothic

by Al Purdy

Some recent highlights.

The swallow chicks from the nests by the living room eaves

left the nest a couple weeks ago and were feed in the trees by 

the porch. You could really see the dominance of the larger

chicks.

Also shot for the living room window, a White-Throated Sparrow

feeds a Brown Headed Cowbird chick. The White-Throated 

Sparrow is considered a rare cowbird host according to The 

Birders Handbook by Enrlich et al.

A young coyote approaches us on our walk. The parents 

apparently stash them somewhere while they go to hunt. Like

teenagers everywhere they then unlock the door and go to the 

mall. A couple of rocks in its direction convinced it that people

and their dogs are not something to approach. 

This summer we went on four studio trails, where you drive thru 

the country and artists welcome you into their homes and studios

to share their work. It give you wonderful insight in how creative

people can be. We bought painting, pottery and quilts as well,

but we really likes these wooden items by three different artists.

I have long wanted to carve birds so I love the Wren I bought, now

I have to get busy.

Finally the local lake in the evening, my wife and her

family fished here on Sundays so it is a special place

for her.

"This is, I think,

what holiness is:

the natural world,

where every moment is full

of the passion to keep moving.

Inside every mind

there's a hermit's cave

full of light,

full of snow,

full of concentration.

I've knelt there,

and so have you,

hanging on

to what you love,

to what is lovely.

The lake's

shining sheets

don't make a ripple now,

and the stars

are going off to their blue sleep,

but the words are in place --

and the fish leaps, and leaps again

from the black plush of the poem,

that breathless space."

               from At The Lake

                by Mary Oliver

Mezzo Cammin

"Half of my life is gone, and I have let
   The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
   The aspiration of my youth, to build
   Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
   Of restless passions that would not be stilled,
   But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
   Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
   Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—
   A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—
   And hear above me on the autumnal blast
   The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

So I am officially retired,  from working, not blogging.

"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

"This is the life I wanted, and could never see.

For almost twenty years I thought that it was enough:

That real happiness was either unreal, or lost, or endless,

And that remembrance was as close to it as I could ever come.

And I believed that deep in the past, buried in my heart

Beyond the depth of sight, there was a kingdom of peace.

And so I never imagined that when peace would finally come

It would be on a summer evening, a few blocks away from home

In a small suburban park, with some children playing aimlessly

In an endless light, and a lake shining in the distance."

from In the Park

by John Koethe

“And beyond the Wild Wood again. he asked:

Where its all dim and blue, and one sees what may

be hills or perhaps they mayn t, and something like

the smoke of towns, or is it only cloud-drift.

Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,"

said the Rat."And that's something that doesn't matter,

either to you or to me. I've never been there,

and I'm never going' nor you either, if you've got any

sense at all.”

from The Wind in the Willows

by Kenneth Grahame

"When you wake to the dream of now

from night and its other dream,

you carry day out of the dark

like a flame."

                      from The Dream of Now

                             by William Stafford

Still no current photos so I found some from a
Sept. walk to the pond in the Research Park. 
Leaves on water, a theme I have loved since I
received Eliot Porter's book In Wildness is the
Preservation of the World.

There have been evenings when the light

has turning everything silver, and like you

I have stopped at a corner and suddenly

staggered with the grace if it all.

                        from Waiting in Line

                           by William Stafford

And every walk, a happy dog.

"The older we get, the deeper we dig into our childhoods,
Hoping to find the radiant cell
That washed us, and caused our lives
                                                                       to glow in the dark like clock

hands
Endlessly turning toward the future,
Tomorrow, day after tomorrow, the day after that,
                                                             all golden, all in good 

 time"

 

                                from Archaeology

                                                   Charles Wright

 

 

Photo Winter 2011

 

 "There's a certain Slant of light,

Winter Afternoons―

That oppresses, like the Heft

Of Cathedral Tunes―"

 

                    from Slant of Light                          

                             Emily Dickinson

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