Friday Ramble - Fourteen Years On

On Sunday morning, clocks in the little blue house in the village turned back an hour, and Daylight Saving Time waved goodbye until next year. The departure of DST also marked fourteen years of pottering about in cyberspace, fourteen years of logging on in the morning, posting an image or two (occasionally three), sometimes muttering along for a few paragraphs, once in a while spilling coffee on the keyboard. There are times when I can't believe I had the audacity to set this "book of days" up in the first place, let alone do the blogging thing faithfully for fourteen years in a row. There are other times when I look at stuff I posted here years ago and am absolutely appalled. Yuck.

These are my morning or artist pages, and chances are they will remain pretty much as they are in the coming year. There may be a bit of font and banner tinkering now and again, but that is all. I don't foresee any significant changes to this place, and I expect life will simply go on as it has been doing so far.

We three will meander along at our own pace, watching morning fogs enfold the eastern Ontario highlands and oak leaves rain like honey in the autumn woods, feasting our eyes on skies alight with winter stars, on the sun going down like a ball of fire over Dalhousie Lake on the trailing edge of the year.

It has been two years since my friends, Penny and Dolores, passed beyond the fields we know, and our sweet Spencer crossed the rainbow bridge the same year. I think of all three every day, and I still miss them. It is Beau who wanders along with us now, and our boy is a wonderful companion, a treasure.

Big big life stuff (the ongoing health issues) notwithstanding, it's grand to be here and all wrapped up in what we call simply, "the Great Round".  Some days are easier than others, but every morning, the small adventures of our journeying will continue to make their way here and get spilled out on the computer screen with a bad photo and a whole rucksack of wonder. Mary Oliver says it best:

The years to come – this is a promise –
will grant you ample time

to try the difficult steps in the empire of thought
where you seek for the shining proofs you think you must have.

But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding,
than this deep affinity between your eyes and the world.
(excerpt from Terns)

In another poem called It Was Early, she wrote that sometimes one needs only to stand wherever she is to be blessed, and that is something I try to keep in mind as I totter about in the village and the Lanark highlands. Thank you for your kind thoughts and healing energies, your comments and cards and letters, for journeying along with me this year. You are treasured more than you know, and if my fingers were working, I would write each and every one of you.