Longing for Wildness

At the beginning of November, there is an overlay of silver on the landscape - the metal lies lightly on the heights and as deeply as a eiderdown comforter in the cold coves and hollows of the highlands. The wind goes whistling through the bare trees and touches everything with icy fingers as it passes, shaking loose the last of the oak, tamarack and poplar leaves. Crackling frost rimed leaves drift ankle deep along every trail into the woods. Within the next few days, the metal will be platinum, or so the weather pundits tell us. There is snow in our cards and runes, snow in the clouds, snow in our moon and stars.

I'm not sure why it is so, but the first weeks of November always seem to find me in something of a restless state, floating along like an abandoned cork adrift between Samhain and Yule. There's a passionate longing to ramble somewhere wild and very windy, but I'm not sure where I want to ramble to and what I hope to find when I get there. There are cameras, paints, easels and brushes in my dreams almost every night, but artistic undertakings when I awaken don't satisfy the hunger to create and completed efforts do not delight as they should - I haven't been happy with a photo or a sketch for a few days now. At times like this, I can understand why one tints her hair purple, acquires a tattoo, runs away and joins the circus or flags down a camel caravan bound for Tashkent.

What I need to do is spend a few hours on the lake in my canoe as the sun is going down, drink in all the sumptuous fiery color in the west, listen to the river as it goes roaring through the darkened gorge, take heart from the canticles of icy wind being sung out there on the frigid water. This (believe it or not) would be a wonderful time to go camping, but I would be going alone - my tribe thinks I am out of my mind to even consider doing such a thing.

Sometimes a little nugget of balance, wisdom and completeness appears in one's life when she needs it most. As I wandered along my leaf drowned trail into the woods yesterday, I paused for a single photo of a milkweed pod close by, thinking that its blowing silk was rather elegant stuff and hoping I could capture it in all the blowing and blustering. When I arrived home and uploaded the photo last evening, there was a fly in the photo, tucked warmly into the heart of the pod and out of the scouring north wind. I found myself smiling - out of such small poignant events and random gifts, perhaps one can craft a measure of serenity.

Let it snow - I am ready.