Friday, March 29, 2024

Friday Ramble - Atomy

The word atomy comes to us from the Middle English attome, the Latin atomus and the Greek atomos: a- (not) plus -tomos (divided), tomos hailing from the Indo-European temnein meaning to cut. Kindred words (of course) are atom, atomism and atomic, anatomy, contemplate, diatom, dichotomy, epitome and tome which now refers to a book or a volume of reading material, but once meant simply something cut or carved from a larger entity. Synonyms include corpuscle, mote, particle, speck, molecule and grain, as in "a grain of sand" or "a grain of sugar".

An atomy is a tiny part of something, a minute particle. Atoms were once held by science to be the smallest possible units of the known physical universe: dense, central, positively charged nuclei circled by electrons whirling around in ecstatic orbit. Complete within themselves, they were thought to be irreducible and indivisible except for constrained processes of removal or transfer or the exchange of component electrons.

Physicists now think the much smaller quark may be the fundamental element of creation. Named after a nonsense word coined by James Joyce in his novel Finnegan's Wake, quarks come in six eccentric flavors: up, down, charm, strange, bottom and top. Up and down quarks bond together to form composite particles called hadrons, the most stable being the protons and neutrons resting in the heart of atoms. Other quark pairs (charm/strange, top/bottom) have no function in our universe as we know it, but they had an important role to play as it was coming into being. Wonder of wonders, everything is in constant motion, these other quark pairs becoming up and down quarks as they decay and taking their rightful place within atoms.

Atomies come to mind when I awaken to grey, springtime skies, to rain on the roof beating staccato time without reference to meter or metronome, to a puckish wind capering in the eaves and ruffling tiny green leaves in the garden like tangy decks of playing cards, to drifting fog wrapping the old trees, rooflines and chimneys in the village.

Each and every drop beyond my windows is an atomy, a minute, complete world teeming with vibrant life, a whole magical universe looking up and smiling at this ungainly creature bent over in wonder with a camera in her hand. I don't think I will ever get a handle on using my macro lens to its full potential, but it is teaching me how to look at the world in new ways, and that is a fine old thing.

Thursday, March 28, 2024

Thursday Poem - You Can't Be Too Careful


Spring storm and hail of ice cubes
pummels my town and no other.
There was a time when townspeople
would call this fall the wrath of God
or work of witches. A lower profile
may have saved some crones
renowned for bitter herbs, odd dames
you went to in the woods for troubles.
But some would go on being busybodies
and scolds dragged out, dunked, drowned
or hung like limp, forgotten fruit
from gallows trees. Scarecrows and
cautionary tales. And truly the crows
flee from our town screaming
blue murder, scarier than a siren.
Even in these enlightened times,
some of us still go warily,
keeping secret our wild simples,
asking nothing for our quirky blessings.

Dolores Stewart Riccio
(from The Nature of Things)

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Reaching for the Light

Siberian squill (Scilla siberica
 
One day, there are deep snowdrifts in the garden, and the next day, the the snow has disappeared into the good dark earth.

Suddenly, tiny flowers are springing up everywhere, reaching for the light over their fragile heads. Grasses thrust themselves out of puddles in the park, and a few ducks paddle up and down the little stream among the trees.  Everywhere, there is birdsong, every feathered singer in the overstory declaring its delight in the season.

On morning walks, we (Beau and I) look for sprouting bloodroot, trout lilies and daffodils in the woods, and we rejoice whenever we see a tiny green leaf lifting its head from the moist, crumbly soil and desiccated leaves.

It will be a week or two before there are many spring bloomers in the woods, but there are already a few tiny purple squill flowering in last autumn's tattered residue on the forest floor, and we were happy to discover them on a recent ramble.

Sometimes, we thought winter would never end, and there are days when we still think that. On balmier days though, we can hardly believe our good fortune. Every sunbeam and every tiny bloom is a gift.

Monday, March 25, 2024

Sunday, March 24, 2024

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World

When tea becomes ritual, it takes its place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things. Where is beauty to be found? In great things that, like everything else, are doomed to die, or in small things that aspire to nothing, yet know how to set a jewel of infinity in a single moment.

 Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Saturday, March 23, 2024

Friday, March 22, 2024

Friday Ramble - Still Cold


It is cold this morning, almost -20 (Celsius) with the wind chill factored into the equation. Beyond our windows are clouds and a forlorn copse of skeletal oaks, maples and ashes trying to put out leaves, catkins and flowers. Alas, the tree people have a long way to go before they leaf out, but they are working on it.

In the street, the north wind cavorts in gutters, ruffles dead leaves and other detritus like playing cards. It eases around the corner of the little blue house in the village and sets the copper wind bells on the deck in exuberant motion. So ardent is the wind's caress that sometimes the bells are almost parallel to the ground.

Trees in the park are still bare, and low mist swirls around them, puckishly revealing a curving branch here, a burl there, a tangle of vines somewhere else. We can almost hear the earth breathing in and out. Most eloquent of all are the empty spaces where trees have expired and gone to earth. The stumps serve as nurseries for tiny saplings that will grow tall and one day take the place of their fallen elders in the woodland, a hopeful state of affairs if there ever was one.

On the way home from our walk, a few robins sing, and a woodpecker (probably a pileated from the volume of its hammering) drives its formidable beak into an old birch. Now and again, he or she pauses, takes a few deep breaths and gives an unfettered laugh that carries for quite a distance. Even a bird in the mirk, it seems, knows the value of taking a break from its work now and again, just breathing in and out for a minute or two and giving voice to a cackle of raucous amusement.

I can't see either the caroling robins or my whomping woodpecker, but that is all right. Their voices are welcome musical elements in a morning that is all about the nebulous, the mysterious, the magical and unseen. Beau and I love our early morning rambles, and we always return home refreshed and hopeful.

In the kitchen, coffee is in progress and and a little Mozart (The Magic Flute) fills the air, but something more is needed. Miracle of miracles, crocus are blooming in the protected southern corner of a neighbor's garden, and I can see them from the window. The little dears are lit from within, and I swear, they could light up the whole village.

Thursday, March 21, 2024

Thursday Poem - Wage Peace


Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of
red wing blackbirds.

Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and
freshly mown fields.

Breathe in confusion and breathe out
maple trees.

Breathe in the fallen and breathe out
lifelong friendships intact.

Wage peace with your listening: hearing
sirens, pray loud.

Remember your tools: flower seeds,
clothes pins, clean rivers.

Make soup.

Play music, memorize the words for
thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.

Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.

Swim for the other side.

Wage peace.

Never has the world seemed so fresh and
precious:

Have a cup of tea... and rejoice.

Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.

Judyth Hill

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Happy Ostara (Vernal Equinox)


Today marks the Vernal Equinox or Ostara, one of two times in the calendar year (along with the Autumn Equinox or Mabon) when the Earth and her unruly children hover in perfect balance for a brief interval. Humans have nothing to do with the occasion. It is a pivotal astronomic point ordained by the heavens above us, by the natural order of things in this magnificent cosmos where we live out our days, spinning like tops in the Great Round of space and time.

If I lived further south, this might be a day of greening and enchantment, a day when Eostre, the old Teutonic goddess of greening and fertility, wanders wild places with her arms full of spring blooms, bestowing blessings on everything she sees. Trees would leaf out as she passed, and flowers would spring up in her footsteps. As always, she would be attended by hares, her special animal. The air would be filled with birdsong, with the heady fragrance of rich dark earth and wild springtime herbs. 

Winter's snow has departed for the most part, but it is still chilly here, and although there is greening in our thoughts, it will be a few weeks until trees leaf out, and greenery emerges everywhere. Clumps of crocus and snowdrops bloom in protected nooks here and there, but there is little or no blooming in open spaces.  

While I was pottering about in the front yard yesterday morning, several skeins of Canada geese flew overhead, honking their pleasure at being home again. The great birds were so high up we could hardly hear them, and they must have been returnees from somewhere far away. On seeing them, I put down my tools and danced a few steps, and the neighbors must have thought I was off my nut.

At nightfall, Beau and I went outside into the garden for a few minutes, and as we shivered in the star spangled darkness, it seemed to us that this month's waxing moon resembles a great cosmic egg - a perfect expression of this turning of the wheel with its verdant motifs of warmth, light and new life coming into being.

There is blooming in our thoughts for sure, but it is still too cold here for outdoor celebrations. Beau and I will spend time outside in the garden tonight, and we will light a votive candle on the deck if the north wind permits it, but our festivities are indoors for the most part. There is room for everyone at our hearth and there are enough mugs, plates and comfortable chairs to go around. Welcome, and come ye in!

Just a Little Snow


Temperatures rise, the sun shines, snowdrifts disappear, things start to pop up in the garden, and one thinks (hopefully) that spring has arrived in the north, but wait... 

After several days of relatively balmy weather, we pulled the draperies open yesterday morning to leaden skies and falling snow. The tulips and daffodils sprouting in the garden were poking up through white stuff and doing their best, but they did not look happy. 

After twittering their displeasure and grabbing a few sunflower seeds from the feeders, the usual morning visitors retreated to the depths of the cedar hedge and hunkered down there, looking miserable. We (Beau and I) were of like mind.

What to do? We wrapped up warmly anyway and went for a long walk around the village, clad in parkas and with our collars turned up against the squall. The weather was only a few degrees below freezing, but it was damp, and the north wind was bitterly cold. Then we came home to tea and buttered waffles.

It was a fine afternoon for huddling in a corner with a mug of something hot and Anthony Horowitz's marvelous Moonflower Murders. The novel starts off on the island of Crete, and moves to England after a chapter or so, but in neither place is there snow, as far as I know. A sunny Greek terrace overlooking the Aegean Sea is perfect for such a dreary day. Mezze anyone? Moussaka? A few glasses of ouzo or retsina?

Sunday, March 17, 2024

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

Saturday, March 16, 2024

Friday, March 15, 2024

Friday Ramble - Entelechy


This week's word is entelechy, and a lovely springtime word it is. Word and concept were coined by Aristotle, springing from the Ancient Greek  entelékheia, a combination of entelēs meaning "complete, finished, perfect” and télos meaning “end, fruition, accomplishment”, plus ékhō meaning simply "to have".

Aristotle defined entelechy as "having one's end within", and he used the word to describe the conditions and processes by which all things attain their highest and most complete expression. French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a Jesuit priest, renowned paleontologist, geologist and physicist, described entelechy as having "something inside you like a butterfly is inside the caterpillar".

Think of entelechy as the prime motivation or dynamic purpose within something, the potential within a nut or acorn to grow into a tree (have always had a "thing" about acorns and oak trees). It is the directive within a bulb to sprout after a long cold winter and burst into flower, the desire within a lotus seed sleeping in the silty depths of a pond to awaken and make its way to the surface, blooming when it comes into the presence of light.

A possibility is encoded within each of us at birth to become fully and completely ourselves, whatever shape that journey may take for us as individuals. In my own mind, I think of entelechy as being the instruction to "go forth and bloom". 

Some of us have a long way to go (thinking of myself here), but we are on our way, and all along the winding trail before us are nuggets of wisdom, wild knowing and shy discernment. To use the words of Emily Dickinson, we "dwell in Possibility", although we manage to forget it most of the time.

It is a seed of truth about which I need a nudge now and again, a gentle reminder. The requirement for such things makes me crotchety and impatient, but that is all right, and it is part of the process too. My exquisite little beech seedling says it all.

Thursday, March 14, 2024

Tobar Phadraic (for St. Patrick's Day)


Turn sideways into the light as they say
the old ones did and disappear
into the originality of it all.

Be impatient with easy explanations
and teach that part of the mind
that wants to know everything
not to begin questions it cannot answer.

Walk the green road above the bay
and the low glinting fields
toward the evening sun, let that Atlantic
gleam be ahead of you and the gray light
of the bay below you, until you catch,
down on your left, the break in the wall,
for just above in the shadows
you’ll find it hidden, a curved arm
of rock holding the water close to the mountain,
a just-lit surface smoothing a scattering of coins,
and in the niche above, notes to the dead
and supplications for those who still live.

But for now, you are alone with the transfiguration
and ask no healing for your own
but look down as if looking through time,
as if through a rent veil from the other
side of the question you’ve refused to ask.

And you remember now, that clear stream
of generosity from which you drank,
how as a child your arms could rise and your palms
turn out to take the blessing of the world.

David Whyte (from River Flow)

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Little By Little, Returning

And so the dance begins, a pair of geese, not a skein or a flock or a "v", just two magnificent Canadas paddling in a pool of melted river in the sunlight. It continues with a Sharp-shinned Hawk etching wide circles in the sky over the same stretch of river and emitting a short, sharp, joyous cry now and then.

A drowsy groundhog perches on a fence post near the gate of the Two Hundred Acre Wood and looks around in disbelief. No doubt he (or she) is considering returning to the den and going back to sleep. There is bark and twiggy stuff to dine on, but only a few withered berries remain from last year, and it will be a while before dandelions and coltsfoot, their favorite spring nosh, appear. As for timothy, alfalfa and clover, it will be some time before such tender, juicy forages are up and "munchable". 

In a nearby spinney, three glossy deer (young bucks) shuffle their feet and drink in the morning, their breath sending up clouds of steam in the cold air. Only a few feet away, several young male turkeys (jakes) strut their stuff and proclaim their superiority, gobbling at each other, puffing up their feathers, spreading their tails and dragging their wings. Their antics are absolutely hilarious.

The brood of young great horned owls being raised in the old oak tree a mile back in the woods is already half grown, and their attentive parents look both proud and haggard. Feeding young "hornies" is hard work.

In spite of the cold and the wind, it appears that springtime is on its way at last. 

Monday, March 11, 2024

Sunday, March 10, 2024

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World


I build a platform, and live upon it, and think my thoughts, and aim high. To rise, I must have a field to rise from. To deepen, I must have bedrock from which to descend. The constancy of the physical world, under its green and blue dyes, draws me toward a better, richer self, call it elevation (there is hardly an adequate word), where I might ascend a little -- where a gloss of spirit would mirror itself in worldly action. I don't mean just mild goodness. I mean feistiness too, the fires of human energy stoked; I mean a gladness vivacious enough to disarrange the sorrows of the world into something better.

It is one of the great perils of our so-called civilized age that we do not acknowledge enough, or cherish enough, this connection between soul and landscape—between our own best possibilities, and the view from our own windows. We need the world as much as it needs us, and we need it in privacy, intimacy, and surety.

Mary Oliver, Long Life: Essays and Other Writings

Saturday, March 09, 2024

And Away We Go...

In the sunny, protected alcove of a neighbor's garden in the village, the first "daffies" of the season are already putting up fragile green leaves. We (Beau and I) were surprised to see them on a morning walk a day or two ago.

In our own garden, there are no signs of daffodils, tulips, snowdrops, crocus, bloodroot, or any other spring bloomers for that matter. Is this a hopeful sign or what?

Friday, March 08, 2024

Friday Ramble - Homecoming

Jubilant skeins of of geese fly in from the south, and they sing their return in noisy unison. The congregations headed further north are so high they are almost invisible among the clouds, their voices only faint honkings on the wind.

Mallard ducks were the first returnees, and they splash about in the open coves of local rivers and ponds, their shiny green heads visible from a distance. In our favorite lake, rafts of diving ducks like scaup and goldeneye bob like corks in the current, and there are a few mergansers about. Ditches and roadside puddles are full of happy quackers voicing their pleasure at being home again.

A solitary heron perches on the shore at the lake and wonders why on earth she has come home so early in the season. Trumpeter swans and loons have more sense, and they return later, waiting until there is enough open water for their outsize landing gear.

In the woods, there are larks and killdeer, beaky snipe and woodcock, grosbeaks, spring warblers and flycatchers. Above them, the graceful "v" shapes (dihedrals) of turkey vultures soar majestically over the countryside, rocking effortlessly back and forth in flight. From below, the light catches their silvery flight feathers and dark wing linings, and the great birds are as magnificent as any eagle.

A solitary goshawk perches in a bare tree on the hill, and a pair of harriers describe perfect, languid circles over the western field. All three are hungry, and they train their fierce yellow eyes on the field below, ardently scanning the ground for a good meal.

This morning, a male cardinal is singing his heart out in the ash tree in the garden, and an unidentified sparrow lifts its voice somewhere in the chilly darkness. Even the weather foretold for the next few days will be a friend. After an unseasonably warm winter and scant snowfall, we need rain, lots and lots of rain.

Thursday, March 07, 2024

Thursday Poem - Return


Through the weeks of deep snow
we walked above the ground
on fallen sky, as though we did
not come of root and leaf, as though
we had only air and weather
for our difficult home.
But now
as March warms, and the rivulets
run like birdsong on the slopes,
and the branches of light sing in the hills,
slowly we return to earth.

Wendell Berry

Wednesday, March 06, 2024

Tuesday, March 05, 2024

Rumors of Spring


Now and then, there are balmy, brilliant blue days in early March, but mostly, we lurch along between winter and spring, blue skies and grey skies, scudding clouds and no clouds at all. Temperatures are up, down and all over the place, and we (Beau and I) are never sure what to wear when we set out in the morning for our first walk, a light, waterproof jacket one day, a warm parka the next.

Wonder of wonders, a gnarly old willow down by the creek was putting up lovely furry catkins a few days ago and the tiny icicles suspended below cradled tiny branches and fragile scraps of green. The little stream at my feet was running free and singing, its waters dark and glossy and filled with possibility. Willow, song and flow are still percolating in my thoughts this morning, a day or two later.

A hodgepodge of seasonal images and motifs perhaps, but not unusual for one of my favorite corners in the great wide world, and I am quite all right with it. There is light in dwindling icicles, in thawing streams and fuzzy little willow buds, and perhaps springtime is not far off. I cling to the thought and turn my collar up against the north wind.

On we go, paw in paw, light flickering through the trees, scraps of green in the landscape around us, geese in the sky above. The slowly awakening world is a symphony written in sound and light, and even our footsteps have a part to play in the performance.

Monday, March 04, 2024

Sunday, March 03, 2024

Sunday, Saying Yes to the World


One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of a March thaw, is the spring. A cardinal, whistling spring to a thaw but later finding himself mistaken, can retrieve his error by resuming his winter silence. A chipmunk, emerging for a sunbath but finding a blizzard, has only to go back to bed. But a migrating goose, staking two hundred miles of black night on the chance of finding a hole in the lake, has no easy chance for retreat. His arrival carries the conviction of a prophet who has burned his bridges. A March morning is only as drab as he who walks in it without a glance skyward, ear cocked for geese.

Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

Saturday, March 02, 2024

Friday, March 01, 2024

Friday Ramble - Written in the Trees

Paper birch, also called White birch and Canoe birch
(Betula papyrifera)

Here we are on the cusp between winter and springtime, weary of ice and snowdrifts, craving light and warmth. It is still below freezing much of the time, an icy wind scouring the bare trees and making the branches ring like old iron bells.

Perhaps that is to be expected, for springtime is a puckish wight this far north, and after making a brief appearance, she sometimes disappears for days and weeks at a time, fickle lass that she is.  After several days of milder weather, dwindling snowdrifts and happy pottering, temperatures plummeted yesterday, and there was a bitter north wind, but the sky was blue, and there was sunshine. Winter (alas) is not over yet.

For all the seasonal toing and froing, late winter days in the woods have a wonderful way of quieting one's thoughts and breathing patterns, bringing her back to a still and reflective space in the heart of the living world.

I sat on a log in the woods a few days ago, watching as tattered scraps of birch bark fluttered back and forth in the north wind. The lines etched in the tree's parchment were words written in a language I could almost understand when my breath slowed and my mind became still. When the morning sun slipped out from behind the clouds, rays of sunlight passed through the blowing strands and turned them golden and translucent, for all the world like elemental stained glass.

When I touched the old tree in greeting, my fingers came away with a dry springtime sweetness on them that lingered for hours. I tucked a thin folio of bark in the pocket of my parka and inhaled its fragrance all the way home.

Happy March, everyone!