Friday Ramble - Gimme Shelter

Shelter's a word dear to a cronish heart in the darkling time of the year. When daylight hours wane, I retreat to books, lighted candles, shawls, mugs of hot stuff and a comfy chair. At dusk, I pull the draperies closed, plump up the pillows, put on the kettle and tune out the cold and the darkness beyond the windows.

In its present form, this week's word has been around since the late sixteenth century, possibly coming from the Middle English sheltroun, sheltron or sheldtrume and Old English scyldtruma or scield.  All forms mean shield, protector or something similar. The most likely Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root form is skel meaning “to cut". Early shelters were likely assembled from military shields fitted closely together, and the earliest shields in use would have been rounded plates of wood. The origins of our word are disputed by linguistic scholars, but there is no doubt that shelter and shield are inextricably linked. 

A shelter is an enclosure of some sort, a cabin, a cave or a hollow, an embracing tree or thicket, a harbor shielded by guardian hills and out of the wind. We all have shelters and sanctuaries, and their shapes and trappings are highly personal. For deer and wild turkeys, shelter is the protection and nourishment afforded by woodland cedar groves in winter. For bears, it's the secluded leaf-strewn dens where they sleep through the long white season. For rabbits and hares, it's snug burrows in the earth and the overhanging branches of evergreens protecting them from icy temperatures and the attention of ravenous predators. For this old hen, it's a fire on the hearth or a lighted candle, a shawl, a mug of Earl Grey or a dear little beaker of espresso, a big fat book (better still a heap) and a comfortable chair. 

One does whatever she has to do to drive the dark away, or at least hold it at bay for a while. Hours are spent dreaming up tankards of steaming goodness, and everything brewed up seems to contain little moons of fragrant orange, clove nubbins, cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods or anise stars, sometimes all at once. A mug of tea always lifts my spirits, and posing creations on the sideboard is a labour of love.

I season my potions with abandon and stir them deosil (clockwise) with a balsam twig or a wand of rosemary from the pot in my kitchen - the mother plant once lived in my herb garden and will be rehomed there with great pomp and circumstance next spring when the earth warms. A small evergreen plant member of the mint family, Salvia rosmarinus is native to the Mediterranean and does not overwinter outside this far north. It does (however) like the light in my south facing kitchen.

In the dusky weeks between now and Yule, I turn inward and find myself thinking about the tiny flame at the heart of things, its tender bloom promising warmth, sunlight and longer days somewhere up the trail, if we can only hang on. Alas, there are many weeks to go before the light returns, at least noticeably so. After December 21st, days will begin to lengthen again, but we will be well into the new year before the change is apparent. Thank Herself for tea and books and warm socks!

Thursday Poem - The River

Out of the tangle of deadlines
and obligations, out of the mire
of self-doubt and fear, rises
the truest intention, a river
you’ve been called to follow.
But don’t just trace its course
from the safety of the bank—
leap into it, immersing yourself
in the irresistible current, let
your body be carried by clearing
water all the way to the source.
Stay devoted to this allowing,
and learn to swim with resistance.
Come to see each looming boulder
not as a blockage, but a momentary
impediment that invites
the river to sing.

James Crews 

(written for Wendell Berry)

Posted with permission from the poet. You may visit him online here.

Wordless Wednesday - Binned

Hitching a Rosy Ride

Beau and I aways notice our neighbor's bright red Toyota truck on morning rambles, but at this time of the year, his whole yard is a thing of beauty. The towering maple that spreads its canopy over his driveway is dropping heaps of blazing crimson leaves in the yard and on the truck's hood, an eye grabbing performance if there ever was one. Rounding the corner yesterday on the way home and seeing the place decked out in full, flaming scarlet stopped us right in our tracks.

We like to compare notes on the tints of local trees in October, and we tell each other about dazzling specimens, exchanging notes when we meet on dog walks or at the community mailbox a few blocks over. The fiery reds have pride of place, but the golden acacias get a mention too, ditto the buttery birches, aspens, tamaracks and ginkgos along Byron Avenue, the russet oaks in the park. The maple tree mentioned in the first paragraph of this post is well known in the village for its lofty height, broad canopy and  flamboyant autumn foliage, and we have great affection for it.

The village is slowly sliding into the softer, more earthy hues of late autumn, and encountering a little red on our walks is a fine thing. Ivan's truck and his magnificent maple light us up whenever we see them.

Sequestered, 375 (CCCLXXV)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you'd think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise. We are alive against the stupendous odds of genetics, infinitely outnumbered by all the alternates who might, except for luck, be in our places.

Even more astounding is our statistical improbability in physical terms. The normal, predictable state of matter throughout the universe is randomness, a relaxed sort of equilibrium, with atoms and their particles scattered around in an amorphous muddle. We, in brilliant contrast, are completely organized structures, squirming with information at every covalent bond. We make our living by catching electrons at the moment of their excitement by solar photons, swiping the energy released at the instant of each jump and storing it up in intricate loops for ourselves.

We violate probability, by our nature. To be able to do this systematically, and in such wild varieties of form, from viruses to whales, is extremely unlikely; to have sustained the effort successfully for the several billion years of our existence, without drifting back into randomness, was nearly a mathematical impossibility.

Add to this the biological improbability that makes each member of our own species unique. Everyone is one in three billion at the moment, which describes the odds. Each of us is a self-contained, free-standing individual, labeled by specific protein configurations at the surfaces of cells, identifiable by whorls of fingertip skin, maybe even by special medleys of fragrance. You'd think we'd never stop dancing.

Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

Creeping Along

Friday Ramble - Hibernate

This week's offering hails from the Latin hībernātus, past participle of the verb hībernāre (to spend the winter) and the noun form hiems (snowstorm, winter). Both are related to the Greek cheimá (winter) and Sanskrit hima (cold, frost or snow). All of the above likely originated in the Proto Indo-European (PIE) root forms ghei-, ghi-, and ghimo- meaning snow or winter. Our word is kin to the mightiest mountains on earth, the Himalayas. The name of that range is a combination of the Sanskrit hima (snow) and alaya (abode), thus meaning "the abode of snow" in that language.

Most birds in the northern hemisphere migrate south for the winter, but other species of wildlife go dormant and sleep through the long white season. During this time, their body temperatures, metabolic rates, breathing and heartbeats slow down, and we refer to the process as hibernating or overwintering. Bears exhibit an elegant and impressive physiology as they hibernate through the winter in leaf-strewn dens. Squirrels, prairie dogs, groundhogs, bats and hedgehogs den up when outdoor temperatures fall, sleeping until temperatures rise. Northern frogs, toads, snakes and turtles are masters of the art of hibernation too.

Humans "do" hibernation too, and we do it in various ways. Some of us migrate to warmer climes to escape ice and snow and cold, but most of us simply withdraw from the outside world to warm dens of our own. Our protocols for getting through the long white season are highly personal. We retrieve shawls, sweaters and gloves from cedar chests, accumulate stacks of books, munchies and music. We kindle fires in fireplaces, pull the draperies closed and surround our winter selves with things that are warm, embracing, spicy and redolent of comfort. For me, mugs of tea and a favorite shawl in deep, earthy red are the right stuff.

I buy more cookbooks between now and spring, make endless pots of tea, cauldrons of soup and casseroles. I listen to classical music and good jazz, pose still life camera compositions on tables and window sills, pile up leaning towers of reading material. The books are usually hardcovers - there is something comforting about holding the real thing in one's hands, the cover art, the way the thick creamy paper feels, the smell of the ink, the illustrations and the typefaces. A beautifully designed book is a work of art, and I wish more of such things were published.

I can get totally caught up in the color of a morning cuppa, and I try to resist the temptation to add cinnamon sticks, anise stars and cardamom pods to anything I brew or stir up in the kitchen. From the depths of the pantry, the makings of fiery curries, vindaloos and silky kormas exert a sovereign tug at the senses that is difficult to ignore. It is almost impossible to pass trees, hedgerows and drifts of fallen leaves in the village without getting lost in their golds and reds and bronzes.

Hibernation also means wandering around with a camera and not staying indoors, trying to capture the light of the sun as it touches clouds, contrails and migrating geese, sparks across frost dappled fields, farm buildings and old rail fences. It's a meditative process holding out stillness and tantalizing glimpses of something wild, elusive and elemental. Ice, frost, snow and the paucity of light notwithstanding, it's all good, and something to be treasured. Every view is a wonder and no two images are the same.

Thursday Poem - This Time of Year

when the light leaves early,

sun slipping down trees as easily

as a spoon of cherry cough syrup,

four deer step delicately up our path,

just at the moment when the

colors shift, to eat fallen apples

in the tall grass. Great grey ghosts.

If we steal outside in the dark,

we can hear them chew.

A sudden movement, they're gone,

the whiteness of their tails a burning

afterimage. A hollow pumpkin moon

rises, turns the dried corn to

chiaroscuro, shape and shadow; 

the breath of the wind draws the

eaves and stalks like melancholy

cellos. These days are songs, noon

air that flows like warm honey,

the maple trees' glissando of fat

buttery leaves. The sun goes straight

to the gut like a slug of brandy,

an eau-de-vie. Ochre October: 

the sky, a blue dazzle, the grand

finale of trees, this spontaneous

applause; when darkness falls like a 

like a curtain, the last act, the passage

of time, that blue current;

October, and the light leaves early,
our radiant hungers, all

these golden losses.

Barbara Crooker, from Radiance

Wordless Wednesday - First Macs (Yum)

View From the Shore

An autumn afternoon, water, sky and silvery light, drifting fog and reeds almost invisible in the murk's embrace, maples reddening and aspens going gold on the far shore. The rocks and hills hills in the distance are mere smudges, but I don't need to see them or capture them with my lens. I remember them from other years, and I can see them clearly in my mind's eye.

Irv loved the view across the lake from here at all times of the year but especially in autumn. He loved the peace, the stillness, the feeling of infinite possibility, the indwelling grace of the world, so perfectly expressed.

What more does one need on the trailing edge of an October day than this? A heron in the shallows would be grand, a loon or two calling from the center of the lake, a paddling of quackers, a skein of joyously honking geese? Perhaps an eagle describing majestic circles in the sky overhead?

If my soulmate was standing here with us, everything would be perfect, but everything else that matters is already here. How we miss the man.

Sequestered, 374 (CCCLXXIV)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

I’m not trying to hide from the truth but to balance it, to remind myself that there are other truths, too. I need to remember that the earth, fragile as it is, remains heartbreakingly beautiful. I need to give my attention to a realm that is indifferent to fretful human mutterings and naked human anger, a world unaware of the hatred and distrust taking over the news.

Margaret Renkl, The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year

Just a Little Rain

Friday Ramble - Edgy

This week's word has been around since the eleventh century, making its way to us through the Middle English egge, the Old English ecg, the Old French aiglent and the Old Germanic ecke, all meaning "corner". It is also related to the Latin acer meaning "sharp", and the Greek akmē meaning "point". At the root of it all is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) form ak- meaning "sharp". Kindred words in the English language include acerbic, acid, acrid, acumen, acupuncture, acute, eager, ester, exacerbate, hammer and selvedge as well as eglantine (or sweetbriar), an old world rose known for its formidable thorns.

An edgy time is this, for the old Celtic year is passing away, and we stand on the threshold of a brand new year, in the north a chilling contraption of fallen leaves and freezing earth, short days, darkness, frost and wind.

The eastern Ontario highlands always seem empty at this time of the year and rather lonesome. Except for Canada geese and a few intrepid herons, migratory birds have departed for warmer climes, and the lakes seem still and empty. Most of our wild forest kin are already hibernating or are thinking about doing it.

There are edges everywhere we look, and the air is fragrant with cedar, spruce and pine. On early walks, the long shadows falling across our trail have edges as sharp as the finest examples of the blade smith's craft. For all the emptiness around us, sunlight changes the landscape into something rich and elegant and inviting: weeds and grasses sculpted into pleasing shapes, bare trees wet and shiny, the margins of blackberry leaves rosy and sparkling with dew.

October seems chthonic to me. That engaging word with its bewildering arrangement of vowels and consonants springs from the Greek khthonios, meaning "of the earth", and it is usually employed in describing subterranean matters and deities of the underworld. In using the adjective, we focus on what is deeper or within, rather than on what is apparent at first glance or resting on the surface. Implicit in the expression are notions of rest, sleep, fertility and rebirth - entelechy, mortality and abundance coexisting and enfolding each other in a deep embrace.

Happy October, everyone! 

Thursday Poem - October

October. Its brilliant festival of dry

and moist decay. Its spicy, musky scent.

The church's parking lot deserted

except for this one witness,

myself, just resting there.

Somewhere a radio plays Flamenco.

A spotlight of sunshine falls on the scattered debris.

Blood-red and gold, a perfect circle of leaves

begins to whirl,

slowly at first, keeping the pattern,

clicking against the blacktop

like heels and castanets,

then faster, faster, faster. . .

round as a ruffle, as the swirling

skirts of an invisible dancer.

Swept off into the tangled woods

by the muscular breeze.

The hoarse cheering of crows.

Inside the dark empty church,

long cool shadows, white-painted wood,

austere Protestant candles thriftily snuffed,

Perhaps a note on the altar,

Gone dancing. Back on Sunday

Dolores Stewart, from The Nature of Things

Wordless Wednesday - Cradled

Turning Toward October

As so it goes... Clear blue skies and sunlight, leaves crunching underfoot on our early rambles and falling on the hoods of parked cars along the street.

Thousands of wild geese are in the air, moving between the river where they spend their nights, and nearby farms where corn stalks are being cut down for the winter. The great Canadas are expert gleaners, and they are off to feed at first light.

Ice crystals rime the puddles along our morning walks, and everything sparkles: grasses, foliage, rooflines and chimneys. The air in the park is perfumed with wild herbs going to seed, and casting their scent to the wind.

No doubt about it, autumn is here. McIntosh apples are being harvested as I write this, and so are squashes and other gourds. I can hardly wait to taste them. 

Sequestered, 373 (CCCLXXIII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

Whatever has happened, whatever is going to happen in the world, it is the living moment that contains the sum of the excitement, this moment in which we touch life and all the energy of the past and future. Here is all the developing greatness of the dream of the world, the pure flash of momentary imagination, the vision of life lived outside of triumph or defeat, in continual triumph and defeat, in the present, alive. All the crafts of subtlety, all the effort, all the loneliness and death, the thin and blazing threads of reason, the spill of blessing, the passion behind these silences — all the invention turns to one end: the fertilizing of the moment, so that there may be more life.

Muriel Rukeyser

Early Wandering, Treasure at My Feet

Friday Ramble - Going for the Gold

It's the reds that grab our attention at this time of the year. When maple trees in the eastern Ontario highlands turn in autumn, the gorges, hills and quiet coves are ablaze with color. Other trees are dazzling in their own right, but their earthier hues are always upstaged by the riotous, cavorting red maples.

There is an elemental chemistry at work in the woods. In summer, the green pigment in leaves (chlorophyll) helps converts sunlight into energy in the elegant chemical process called photosynthesis. (That word comes from the Greek phōs meaning "light", and suntíthēmi meaning "putting together".) Trees retain the carbon dioxide extracted during photosynthesis and use it to manufacture nourishment, together with water taken in through their roots. Oxygen extracted at the same time is released back into the earth's atmosphere for us to breathe.

Wild and earthy magics of the very finest kind are in progress, trees and sentient beings all breathing in and out together and sharing the bounty of light. That there is magic is without question, and it always seems to me that trees are sentient beings too, not just woody things with leaves and branches and roots.

When autumn arrives, deciduous trees withdraw into themselves. Chlorophyll production slows down, allowing the anthocyanin and carotenoid pigments also in leaves to come into their own. Leaves high in anthocyanins and low in carotenoids turn scarlet, and those with high levels of both flavinoids flash bright orange. Leaves high in carotenoids and low in anthocyanins do a sky dance in honeyed golds and yellows. Absent both anthocyanins and carotenoids, tannins rule, giving us the burnished russets, ochres, umbers and bronzes of the great oaks, hickories and beeches.

Like most northerners, I have a passion for scarlet, claret and ruby in autumn, but it always seems to me that the golds, bronzes and russets of our other native tree species don't get the attention they so richly deserve. The oro (gold) on display here in late September and early October is anything but pallido (pale or light). It dazzles the eye; it sings and struts and dances; it kicks up its heels. It rocks.

Poplars, ashes, elms and birches wear radiant saffron, and so do ginkgo trees in the village. Beech leaves are coppery coinage, and oak leaves turn an alluring rosy bronze. In Lanark, the aspens and tamaracks down by our beaver pond wear a delightful buttery gold. Nearby, late blooming goldenrod sways back and forth until it goes to seed and offers its fuzzy children to the wind. A few resolute yellow daisies and hawkweed bloom in protected nooks among the rocks. Everywhere, there is fine contrast from spruces, pines and cedars in the background, and blue-green evergreen fragrance fills the air.

And then there are all the smaller bright entities down on the forest floor among the fallen leaves. Eastern yellow fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) glows like a hundred watt bulb in the woods, and one can spot it in autumn as at no other time of the year. From the shadows, the lovely but poisonous fungus dishes out its frothy incandescence like a halogen lamp set on high beam.

Here's to the glorious golds of the fall panoply. When the long white season arrives and snow covers the countryside, it is the golds that will turn up in my dreams. Long may they delight these old eyes in dazzling array.

Thursday Poem - Why We Tell Stories

1
Because we used to have leaves
and on damp days
our muscles feel a tug,
painful now, from when roots
pulled us into the ground

and because our children believe
they can fly, an instinct retained
from when the bones in our arms
were shaped like zithers and broke
neatly under their feathers

and because before we had lungs
we knew how far it was to the bottom
as we floated open-eyed
like painted scarves through the scenery
of dreams, and because we awakened

and learned to speak

2
We sat by the fire in our caves,
and because we were poor, we made up a tale
about a treasure mountain
that would open only for us

and because we were always defeated,

we invented impossible riddles

only we could solve,

monsters only we could kill,

women who could love no one else

and because we had survived

sisters and brothers, daughters and sons,

we discovered bones that rose

from the dark earth and sang

as white birds in the trees

3

Because the story of our life

becomes our life

Because each of us tells

the same story

but tells it differently

and none of us tells it

the same way twice

Because grandmothers looking like spiders

want to enchant the children

and grandfathers need to convince us

what happened happened because of them

and though we listen only

haphazardly, with one ear,

we will begin our story

with the word and

Lisel Mueller, from Alive Together

Wordless Wednesday - Puddle Holding the Sky

Happy Fall Equinox

Molly Makes a Stand

Molly resembles the Raggedy Anne doll I had as a child, and I enjoy seeing her under the tree in a neighbor's garden in late September. She conveys seasonal sentiments eloquently with her round eyes, crookedy stitched smile, corn husk hair and hands, red corduroy overalls and flowered shirt. Crowning it all is a fine squashy burlap hat.

My friend is a scarecrow or flaycraw, a traditional Yorkshire and northern English word crafted from two Old English roots: "flay" (from flíȝan or flēȝan) meaning to frighten or put to flight, and "craw" (from crāwe), an archaic word for crow. Thus, Molly is a "crow-frightener", or scarecrow in modern parlance. Yorkshire dialects are a treasure trove of colourful words and expressions, and York St John University maintains a website devoted to such things: Yorkshire Dialects. Lots of splendid words there for etymology and dialect enthusiasts, and I visit the place often. 

Molly doesn't scare crows or other birds, and as a matter of fact, they like to perch on her and sing. Every few years, she becomes rather grubby, tattered, and festooned with bird droppings. When that happens, she undergoes a midlife refit. Her corn husk hair and hands are replaced, and she gets a new hat and overalls. This year, she also seems to have acquired a new head.

Sequestered, 372 (CCCLXXII)

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

We are animal in our blood and in our skin. We were not born for pavements and escalators but for thunder and mud. More. We are animal not only in body but in spirit. Our minds are the minds of wild animals. Artists, who remember their wildness better than most, are animal artists, lifting their heads to sniff a quick wild scent in the air, and they know it unmistakably, they know the tug of wildness to be followed through your life is buckled by that strange and absolute obedience. ('You must have chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star,' wrote Nietzsche.) Children know it as magic and timeless play. Shamans and inveterate misbehavers know it; those who cannot trammel themselves into a sensible job and life in the suburbs know it.

What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is. Unmistakeable, unforgettable, unshamable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, a quintessence, pure spirit, resolving into no constituents. Don't waste your wildness: it is precious and necessary.

Jay Griffiths, Wild: An Elemental Journey

Longing For Light

Friday Ramble - For the Autumn Equinox

It seems as though summer has just arrived, but here we are again, nearing the eve of the autumn equinox. Slightly cooler mornings, heavy dews and falling leaves after months of blistering heat and humidity, can it be?

The autumn equinox is often observed on a fixed date (September 21st), but the astronomical coordinate this time around is Tuesday, September 22. Like all the old seasonal festivals, the observance begins at sundown on the night before, Monday, September 21st. South of the equator, the natural cycles are reversed, and Monday night is the eve of the vernal equinox (Ostara).

The fall equinox is a pivotal cosmic hinge, and it wears many names: Mabon, Harvest Home, Second Harvest, the Feast of Ingathering and Alban Elfed, to name just a few. Mabon is the most common of the bunch, a modern invention taken from the name of the god Mabon (Maponus), a male fertilizing principle in Welsh mythology.

The American pagan Aidan Kelly came up with the name Mabon in the seventies when he was crafting a calendar for modern pagans and noticed the fall equinox did not have a pagan name of its own. His invention has stuck, but I think of the festival as "Harvest Home". As such, it has been celebrated for time out of mind, and the name recognizes the grain and harvest motifs at the heart of the observance. 

Tuesday's observance blends modern pagan practices with the rich traditions of ancient harvest festivals. Ceres, Demeter, John Barleycorn, Lugh, Tammuz and Persephone are better candidates for a tutelary deity presiding over autumn harvest rites, but I do have a soft spot for the "Great Son" of the Mabinogion, sometimes considered a companion of Arthur's Round Table. Mabon may not be harvest god, but he is certainly a powerful symbol of the land's bounty.

In the old Teutonic calendar, the autumn equinox marked the beginning of the Winter Finding, a ceremonial interval lasting until Winter Night on October 15, also the date of the old Norse New Year. For moderns, the date marks the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. In Christian tradition, the day is associated with St. Michael the Archangel—his feast takes place a few days from now on September 25 and is known (for obvious reasons) as Michaelmas. The autumn blooming Michaelmas daisy or New England aster with its purple petals and golden heart is one of my favorite wildflowers, and I always look forward to its blooming.

The autumn equinox is about abundance and harvest, but most of all, it is about balance and equilibrium—one of two astronomical coordinates in the whole turning year when day and night are perfectly balanced in length. Like all the old festivals dedicated to Mother Earth, it is a liminal or threshold time, for we are poised between two seasons, summer and autumn.

One holds out hopeful thoughts for the autumn equinox, that skies overhead will be brilliantly blue and full of singing geese by day, that trees and vines and creepers will be arrayed in crimson and gold, that a splendid golden moon will be visible against a blanket of stars by night. This year, the moon will be almost full, and September's full moon is usually called (surprise, surprise) the Harvest Moon.

Autumn images tug at the heart, and I always prowl through reams of archived images looking for just the right one for this day, but I am never sure I have found it. Falling leaves, asters, puddles, clouds, light, geese, herons??? It's always about the light, and autumn light is absolutely fabulous.