"Recall, reader if ever in the mountains 

a mist has caught you, through which you could not 

see except as moles do through the skin

how when the moist vapours began to dissipate,

the sphere of the sun enters freely through them ,

and your imagination will quickly see how, at first 

I saw the sun again, which is now at its setting"

from Purgatory X11, 1-9

by Dante translator Charles S. Singleton

One morning at the cabin I looked out so see a stream of

fog running thru a low spot where the land dips between the

 ridge where the cabin sits before it rises again, slightly to form 

a finger like peninsula jutting into the slough. The fog moved out

through the brush along the edge of the slough becoming a water

fall of mist pouring down the bank to the water and eventually 

dancing like the narrows before burning off in the morning sun.

Fog is the stuff of magic and mystery.

"In the morning, mist comes up from the sea by the cliffs 

beyond Kingsport. White and feathery it comes from the deep 

to its brothers the clouds, full of dreams of dank pastures 

and caves of leviathan. And later, in still summer rains on the 

steep roofs of poets, the clouds scatter bits of those dreams,

that men shall not live without rumor of old strange secrets, 

and wonders that planets tell planets alone in the night. 

When tales fly thick in the grottoes of tritons, and conchs in 

seaweed cities blow wild tunes learned from the Elder Ones, 

then great eager mists flock to heaven laden with lore, and 

oceanward eyes on tile rocks see only a mystic whiteness, 

as if the cliff's rim were the rim of all earth, and 

the solemn bells of buoys tolled free in the aether of faery. "

from The Strange High House in the Mist

by H.P. Lovecraft

"Mine are the night and morning, 

The pits of air, the gulf of space, 

The sportive sun, the gibbous moon, 

The innumerable days."

from Song of Nature

by Emerson

On today's canoe trip eagle or osprey we are not sure?

It was big. Very Big. Roc?

"Our paddles keen and bright, 

Flashing like silver; 

Swift as the wild goose flight, 

Dip, dip, and swing.

Dip, dip, and swing them back, 

Flashing like silver; 

Swift as the wild goose flight, 

Dip, dip and swing."

The Paddle Song

" 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

"Let it go

Let it roll right off your shoulder

Don't you know

The hardest part is over

Let it in

Let your clarity define you

In the end

We will only just remember how it feels 

Our lives are made

In these small hours

These little wonders

These twists and turns of fate

Time falls away

But these small hours

These small hours still remain 

Let it slide

Let your troubles fall behind you

Let it shine

Till you feel it all around you

And i don't mind

If it's me you need to turn to

We'll get by

It's the heart that really matters in the end"

from Little Wonders

Theme song from " Meet the Robinsons"

composed by Rob Thomas

"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

 By Herman Melville

My brother in law Ralph cuts the hay.

"Far to the north, or indeed in any direction

strange mountains and creatures have always lurked-

elves, goblins,trolls, and spiders:-we

encounter them in dread and wonder,

But once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold

found some limit beyond the waterfall

a season changes, we come back , changed

but safe, quiet, graceful."

     from Allegiances

               by William Stafford

"My soul would sing of metamorphoses.

But since, o gods, you were the source of these

bodies becoming other bodies, breathe

your breath into my book of changes: may

the song I sing be seamless as its way

weaves from the world's beginning to our day."

                     from The Metamorphoses of Ovid

                             translated by Allen Mandelbaum

I have posted photos of the vixen and her three cubs at the farm

previously this summer. Thursday my mother in law mentioned she

had found a fox tail in garden, and we wondered who might have been

responsible Willow the farm dog or possibly a coyote, who do prey on

foxes. Friday morning my wife and I drove past the farm lane and 

encountered four foxes. seemed to have tails so we have no idea

whose was in the garden.

"In a cave somewhere they carved an animal 
jumping: that leap stayed."

             from They Carved An Animal
           by William Stafford

"Deep into distant woodlands winds a mazy way, reaching to 

overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in their hill-side blue. 

But though the picture lies thus tranced, and though this pine-tree 

shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this shepherd's head, yet 

all were vain, unless the shepherd's eye were fixed upon the magic 

stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June, when for scores 

on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among Tiger- lilies - 

what is the one charm wanting? - Water - there is not a drop 

of water there! "

                              both quotes from Moby-Dick

                                            By Herman Melville

This was the first Tiger-lily of our summer and I did take the

photo in June. It is berry season now the dry weather making for

bumper crops so far.

"He lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; 

he hides among the waves, he climbs them as chamois 

hunters climb the Alps. For years he knows not the land; 

so that when he comes to it at last, it smells like another 

world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman. 

With the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is 

rocked to sleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, 

out of sight of land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while 

under his very pillow rush herds of walruses and whales."