Christmas 2019, Driving to Saskatoon

“The sky is realest: the sky cannot
Be touched and in the mirror it cannot
Be touched. He is enchanted. The rare azur
Is flawless; happily blurred blue is no whit
Less exquisite than blue unblurred. And what
He misses he would never know was there.”

James Merrill - Collected Poems

Fires - Heat

" The sun is axeman among dry 
Slashings: he would clear 
Kindling from the rocky hills " 

Blue Jay in Haliburton 
D.G. Jones 

Still really hot here.

Last night after a lovely meal and visit with the in-laws we

were heading home, okay a couple of quarters down the road, 

when we noticed the most beautiful sunset. This is probably

the result  of enormous forest fires in BC, a couple of provinces

over. In 2015 fires some 500 miles north of us in La Rounge

Sask. meant the first few weeks of our first extended stay

at the cabin were quite smoky. Last year we saw some smoke

 from BC fires on the way back to Alberta, and of course there

was the huge fire in Fort McMurray in May before we came out. 

We have not smelt smoke this year but last night's sunset was

spectacular.

"I summon up the roller-coasting south, 

Cry birth day to the lion sun."

from Genii

by Dorthy Livesay

Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. 

I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous.

Anais Nin

" 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

" I could see that I lived in the created world, and it was

 still being created. I would be part of it forever. There was no escape. 

The Spirit that made it was in it, shaping it and reshaping it, 

sometimes lying at rest, sometimes standing up and shaking itself,

 like a muddy horse, and letting the pieces fly.” 

 

from Jayber Crow

Wendell Berry

To get to the cabin,, once you have abandoned highway 

for a gravel grid road is to enter a farm field. 

My wife pointed out on this trip, that what she is looking forward to

about the cabin are the changes from season to season, year to year. 

But even the trip from the grid to the cabin is a study in niches. 

Here it is still a working farm which in this season is given over to

the shredded wheat shapes of the great round bales. 

It is in their shade that Shaun will rest while we prospect for

arrowheads. The deer sleep in the tall grass at the edge of the field 

before the  grass gives way to aspen and the dogs are fascinated by 

the flattened down circles that mark their beds.  A trip down this lane 

is sunshine, vesper sparrows,goldfinches and the while tufts of 

the thistle heads releasing their seeds.

 

 

 

"But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky;
and the air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away
meadow; they have been making hay somewhere
under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and the mowers
are sleeping among the new-mown hay."

from Moby Dick
Herman Melville

Then we mount the ridge above the slough. Here

is sun dappled shadow, the trails of beavers crossing

 from slough to slough, waxwings and woodpeckers.

And finally breaking free of the trees we find the 

meadow where the cabin sits and the slough beyond.

 

Sunset at the farm April 22, 2011

"Sometimes the light when evening falls

stains all the haystacked country and hills,

runs the cornrows and clasps the barn

with that kind of colour escaped from corn"

                                          Level Light

                                                      William Stafford