"It was a pretty sight, and a seasonable one, that met their eyes

 when they flung the door open. In the fore-court, lit by the dim 

rays of a horn lantern, some eight or ten little field-mice stood in 

a semicircle, red worsted comforters round their throats, their fore-paws 

thrust deep into their pockets, their feet jigging for warmth. With bright 

beady eyes they glanced shyly at each other, sniggering a little, sniffing 

and applying coat-sleeves a good deal. As the door opened, one of the elder 

ones that carried the lantern was just saying, "Now then, one, two, three!" and 

forthwith their shrill little voices uprose on the air, singing one of the 

old-time carols that their forefathers composed in fields that were fallow 

and held by frost, or when snow-bound in chimney corners, and handed 

down to be sung in the miry street to lamp-lit windows at Yule-time."

We had a nice long break at Christmas, Helen's mother was 

here for the week. We had friends over Christmas Day for 

turkey and a viewing of Alastair Sim in a Christmas Carol but

I wanted to celebrate the season a bit more. This blog is of

course named with a quote from the Wind in the Willows so two

more quotes seemed appropriate. and this cast of characters

has been lovingly assembled over the years to help us

remember to honour Christmas in out hearts, hopefully all

year long.

        

        

  

"He saw clearly how plain and simple — how narrow, 

even — it all was; but clearly, too, how much it all meant 

to him, and the special value of some such anchorage in 

one's existence. He did not at all want to abandon the 

new life and its splendid spaces, to turn his back on sun 

and air and all they offered him and creep home and 

stay there; the upper world was all too strong, it called to 

him still, even down there, and he knew he must return to 

the larger stage. But it was good to think he had this to 

come back to, this place which was all his own, these things 

which were so glad to see him again and could always be 

counted upon for the same simple welcome."

both quotes  from the Wind in the Willows

                                                                by Kenneth Graham

"On every side the shadowy hills or the guessed, featureless sea 

extended beyond sight. But the hawk-flight of imagination followed 

them as they curved downward below the horizon. I perceived that I 

was on a little round grain of rock and metal, filmed with water and 

with air, whirling in sunlight and darkness. And on the skin of that 

little grain all the swarms of men, generation by generation, had lived 

in labor and blindness, with intermittent joy and intermittent lucidity 

of spirit. And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, 

its philosophies, its proud sciences, its social revolutions, its increasing

 hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of stars.

If one could know whether among that glittering host there were here 

and there other spirit-inhabited grains of rock and metal, whether man's 

blundering search for wisdom and for love was a sole and insignificant 

tremor, or part of a universal movement!"

from The Star Maker (1937)

Olaf Stapledon

Well I have been very lazy lately, I have not even finished 

editing my summer photos from the cabin.

I will try top be a little more active this year

although I am not much for resolutions. 

In the early morning I like to walk down the grid road 

that passes our lane to a small slough where the road curves. 

It was on one of these walks that I met this Waxwing. I am 

always amazed at how delicately coloured they are when 

I see one up  close. 

All the best in 2015

" 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

                                                                                                                                                                                               

Merry Christmas Every One!!!

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all 

the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. 

The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut 

out the lessons that they teach!” 

                from  The Christmas Carol

 

"He clasps the crag with crooked hands;

Close to the sun in lonely lands,

Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;

He watches from his mountain walls,

And like a thunderbolt he falls."

 

The Eagle

  Tennyson

 

This eagle was was far from crags and oceans, actually it was

asleep in a pasture when we first saw it. Once I started siddling

up it gave me the fish eye. Then a huge flock of hundreds of starlings

appeared they did not mob it they just watched but the eagle had seen

enough and flew away.

 

 

 

"No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still.
The forest knows Where you are.
You must let it find you."

 

from Lost

By Mary Oliver

"Miraculous. It is as though the world
were a great writing. Having said so much,
let us allow there is more to the world
than writing: continental faults are not
bare convoluted fissures in the brain.
Not only must the skaters soon go home;
also the hard inscription of their skates
is scored across the open water, which long
remembers nothing, neither wind nor wake."

                                 from Writing

                                    by Howard Nemerov

Some photos of a fellow traveler I meet one morning as

I strolled along the lane at our cabin. Reptiles and Amphibians

have always had a fascination for me and in this area of

Saskatchewan the Garter Snake, the Plains Toad and the

Tiger Salamander are the species I am most likely to

encounter. I have meet Tiger Salamanders in some fairly 
dry windy areas of Alberta, which quite surprised me
and I am very happy to see them here. Hopefully I can get
to know them better when I can spend more time at the cabin.

"When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry? "

                                     From The Tyger

                                       By William Blake

"I remember you. You're the one
who lifted your ancient bones
of fossil rock, pulled yourself free
of the strata like a plaster figure
rising from its own mold, became
flesh and feather, took wing,
arrested the sky."

 

from Stone Bird

by Patttiann Rogers

 

 

"here is nine o'clock, harbor-wide,
and a glinting code: promise and warning.
The morning's the size of heaven.

What will you do with it? "          

 

from Long Point Light

Mark Doty                

When I hear them call

in the morning, before

I am quite awake,

my bed is already traveling

the daily rainbow,

the arc toward evening;

and the birds, leading

their own discreet lives

of hunger and watchfulness,

are with me all the way,

always a little ahead of me

in the long-practiced manner

of unobtrusive guides.

from Why I Need Birds

 by Lisel Mueller

        

      

Enchanted is what they were

in the old stories, or if not that,

they were guides and rescuers of the lost,

the lonely, needy young men and women

in the forest we call the world.

That was back in a time

when we all had a common language.    

from   Animals Are Entering Our Lives

 by Lisel Mueller