“Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world, in feeling myself a part of it, even in a small way.” ― May Sarton

 

This summer we will return to the cabin. 

Hopefully the beavers will have left us a tree or two.

“For any writer who wants to keep a journal, 

be alive to everything, not just to what you're feeling, 

but also to your pets, to flowers, to what you're reading.” 

May Sarton

On our walk today.

“A schedule defends from chaos and whim. A net for catching days.”

― Annie Dillard,
The Writing Life

Fall Reflections

"This land like a mirror turns you inward

And you become a forest in a furtive lake;

The dark pines of your mind reach downward,

You dream in the green of your time,

Your memory is a row of sinking pines."

from Dark Pines Under Water

by Gwendolyn MacEwen

This is a Wild Wood indeed.

The Crooked Trees, Crooked Bush, Twisted Trees or the Crooked Trees of Alticane are a grove of deformed trembling aspen trees of type Populus tremuloides Michx. found in Saskatchewan, Canada. They are found approximately twenty kilometers north-north-west of the town of Hafford, Saskatchewan and just over five kilometers south-west of Alticane.

The trees, prominent in Saskatchewan folklore, are dramatically different from the un-twisted aspens just across the road. Explanations have been offered which include various paranormal factors. However, cuttings from these trees, propagated in Manitoba, exhibit the same pattern of twisted growth, suggesting that the cause is rooted in genetics, possibly the result of a mutation.^[1][2]

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crooked_Trees

"Whenever one drifted petal leaves the tree- 
Though white of bloom as it had been before 
And proudly waitful of fecundity- 
One little loveliness can be no more; 
And so must Beauty bow her imperfect head 
Because a dream has joined the wistful dead! "

from A Dream Lies Dead

by Dorothy Parker

And if you visit, stop at the A&M Bistro and Bakery in Hafford

for soup and a sandwich, at the best lunch spot on the prairies

 And take home some baking.

Went to Kew today. Nowhere near Natural History Museum. We are fine.

"I have been younger in October

than in all the months of spring

… walnut and may leaves the color

of shoulders at the end of summer

a month that has been to the mountain

and become light there

the long grass lies pointing uphill

even in death for a reason

that none of us knows"

W.S. Merwin