Yellow Lady Slipper

Yellow Lady Slipper
Cypripedium parviflorum (or Cypripedium pubescens)

There seems to be a bit confusion on the proper naming of this fey woodland cousin, so I am noting both the Latin names in use for it here in the highlands. This colony is well over a hundred years old, and its blooms are huge and golden yellow - even the leaves are a marvel.

Unlike the Showy Lady Slipper whose blooms are borne vertically and look straight out at their admirers, the yellows tend to lean at peculiar angles, and they peer, nodding, inclined and curious from among their billowing bright green leaves. Yesterday, they glowed like beacons from right across the ridge.

The Friday Ramble - Ephemera/Ephemeral

The word comes from the Greek from the Greek εφήμερος meaning lasting only one day, and it is used to describe entities which exist for only a short duration.

A journal or diary is an ephemeris, and several together are ephemeredes—someone who keeps a journal or writes an almanac may be called an ephemerist.

Nature is full of ephemeral entities and life forms. Ephemeral streams and creeks are those which last only for a brief interval, usually in springtime when winter's snows have disappeared or after a torrential downpour of some kind, either rain or snow. Many plants and a small number of insects are ephemeral - they come into being, mature and pass away within a short time, and their living hour is bright, intense and vibrant. Mayflies (ephemeroptera), Atlas and Luna moths are ephemeral and so is one of my favorite woodland residents, the cicada. Like the beautiful saturnids, the adult cicada has no mouth, and so, it cannot feed. After a long adolescence spent quietly underground, it climbs up into the light and sings gloriously to attract a mate. Once it finds a mate, and its genes have been perpetuated, it expires and passes effortlessly back into the essential matter of the universe.

Look around, and we begin to understand that almost everything we encounter in life is ephemeral: trees, rosebuds, cherry blossoms and garden lupins, golden corn and fields of standing grain, rabbits in the hedgerow, herons and hawks, wild wolves and shy woodland deer.

We too are ephemeral creatures. In the greater scheme of things, our allotted time on the planet is brief, hardly more than a day in fact, but oh, how we blaze with life! Like beacons and lighthouses, we are lit from within by a light that is blindingly bright and intensely passionate. As the poet John Masefield wrote in The Passing Strange:

But gathering, as we stray, a sense
Of Life, so lovely and intense,
It lingers when we wander hence,

That those who follow feel behind
Their backs, when all before is blind,
Our joy, a rampart to the mind.

What does ephemeral mean to you?

Thursday Poem - Ithaca

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the angry Poseidon -- do not fear them:
You will never find such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your spirit and your body.
The Lestrygonians and the Cyclops,
the fierce Poseidon you will never encounter,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not set them up before you.

Pray that the road is long.
That the summer mornings are many, when,
with such pleasure, with such joy
you will enter ports seen for the first time;
stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensual perfumes of all kinds,
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.

Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.
She has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not deceived you.
Wise as you have become, with so much experience,
you must already have understood what Ithacas mean.

Constantine Cafavy, Ithaca

Every once in a while, I manage to surprise myself. In the wee hours of this morning, I awoke from a happy dream about an unnamed magical city on the distant shores of a mythical sea. Into the study I came at once, and on went the computer - first, the background was executed in Photoshop, then the city was drawn in Illustrator, and then I tucked them in together. When I was finished, I toasted my creation with a mug of Ceylon tea. Cafavy's magnificent poem, Ithaca, a long time favorite, fits in very well indeed.

The Flower Moon of May

You thought perhaps that I had forgotten about Monday's full moon? I did not, but May's full moon was an elusive creature, hidden for the most part behind dense dark rain clouds and only peeking forth for a fleeting moment, now and again. Not seeing the full moon put something of a damper on my springtime sentiments, and I waited another night, hoping for a clear view, but (alas), this is the May moon image of another year. There is something just plain old wrong about not seeing the full moon in the month of May when the whole world north of the equator is greening up with abandon, and there seem to be inducements to fertility and the proliferation of species everywhere one looks.

May's is the moon of flowers and planting, and hopefully the first moon of the year in which there is no frost on the ground. Above all else, it honours natural cycles and the spirit of the harvest to be — I think of this moon as the "moon of growing things" or the "moon of the faithful gardener". As we prepare our garden plots and sow our seeds in the good dark friable earth, we are also planting seeds within, and we are already casting our thoughts forward to summer days of light, warmth, weeding and fertilizing, distant autumn rhythms of reaping, gathering and "putting things by" for winter. Each and every seed is a wonder in the joyous process of evolving and becoming, just as we are.

For Buddhist practitioners, this is the Moon of Wesak and the most holy interval of the whole turning year, the day on which the Buddha reached enlightenment under his Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, India. On this full moon, perhaps we can think about the nature of connection and the manner in which we are walking this path together.

We also know this moon as the: Alewife Moon, Blossom Moon, Bottlebrush Moon, Bright Moon, Budding Moon, Corn Planting Moon, Dragon Moon, Dyad Moon, Fawn Moon, Field Maker Moon, Fish Moon, Frog Moon, Frogs Return Moon, Geese Go North Moon, Geese Moon, Grass Moon, Hare Moon, Idle Moon, Iris Moon, Joy Moon, Leaf Tender Moon, Leafing Out Moon, Leaves Appear Moon, Lily of the Valley Moon, Little Corn Moon, Little Finger Moon, Magnolia Moon, Merry Moon, Milk Moon, Moon of Big Leaf, Moon of the Strawberry, Moon of Clouds and Thunder, Moon of Waiting, Moon When Corn is Planted, Moon When Ponies Shed Their Fur, Moon When the Buffalo Plant is in Flower, Moon When the Leaves Are Green, Moon When the Little Flowers Die, Moon When the Horses Get Fat, Moon When Women Weed Corn, Mulberry Moon, Mulberry Ripening Moon, New Waters Moon, Old Woman Moon, Panther Moon, Penawen Moon, Peony Moon, Planting Moon, Putting Seeds in the Hole Moon, Rain Falls Moon, Seeds Moon, Seeds Ripen Moon, Sprout Kale Moon, Staying Home Moon, Storm Moon, Storing Moon, Strawberry Moon, Suckers Dried Moon, Summer Moon, Thrice Milk Moon, Moon, When the Ponies Shed Shaggy Hair Moon, Wesak Moon, Wind Tossed Moon, Winnemon Moon

Happy Wesak to you and yours.

First Columbine

Wild Columbine
(Aquilegia canadensis)

By the Pond

It is too early in the season for turtles, and it will be some time before frogs and minnows are here in sufficient numbers to lure the great herons and smaller bitterns to grace the pond with their august presences. Invoking the happy habits of previous springtimes, I looked for them anyway as I sat by the pond yesterday.

I measured the height of the new cattails fringing the pond and shooting upward almost as I watched, the depth of the calm water along the shoreline - I listened to the current running over the rocks and through the beaver channels and the reeds. I watched the warm run-honey sunlight flickering through the trees and playing over the pond, slow ripples forming and moving outward in ever widening circles.

Life's uncertainties, embarrassments, pains, pangs and discomforts notwithstanding, life was good yesterday, and I found myself wondering I wondered why I get in such a flap at times. One would think that I should have learned better by now, but it appears I still have much to learn from these rivers and ponds and hills, from the good dark earth of this wild place of abundant grace and untrammeled nurturing. It's all a matter of simplicity - it all comes down to being mindful and dwelling fully in the moment, resting easy in the fleeting here and the now of this plane of existence.

All one really needs in life is earth, water, sunshine, trees and good companions to journey on with, the healing touch of the Old Wild Mother on one's shoulder. Yesterday, I could hear Her breathing, and it felt like a benediction.

Flowering Baneberry

White Baneberry or Doll's Eyes
(Actaea pachypoda)

I discovered this in the woods yesterday and couldn't resist capturing it on my memory card, the delightfully ornate and frilly white version of this wickedly poisonous deep woodland cousin which also occurs in a red berried form.

Later in the season, the white baneberry bears large waxy white berries, each with a large black dot on its end - the berries dance on red stalks which resemble the jacks used in that fine old children's game sometimes called fivestones and onesies. Just a few of the odd looking berries consumed can make one very sick indeed, and more than a few ingested can be fatal. They are (however) fetching creatures when they are in bloom in the woods in May.

Do children still play jacks on their playgrounds at recess, I wonder?

In Greening Heart

It's strange how these common images catch the eyes and tug one's imagination and heartstrings inward. This is just a frond of the great white pine which stands on the edge of the eastern hill, a simple but attractive arrangement in which a mandala of intense blue-green (and very fragrant) needles radiate outward from a heart in which there nestles a pair of tiny infant pine cones.

This morning, the whole tree was in motion over my head, and I loved the effortlessly flowing symmetry of so many pine scented mandalas cradling little cones. For some reason, I found myself thinking of vast oceans and tall ships under sail with creaking wooden masts. I also thought of wheels, of great turnings and webs, particularly Indra's diamond web.

The Friday Ramble - Patience

Given that I am suffering through the full scale "no holds barred" onset of a whole raft of seasonal allergies, the word for this week had to be either patient or stoic. I am feeling rather woolly minded at the moment, but patient seems a good choice.

Where does the word come from? The origins say it all - the word comes to us from the Middle English pacient and the Middle French patient, thence from the Latin word pati, meaning to undergo something, to suffer through or put up with something. Patient is a good word for one who aspires to authenticity or enlightenment, but it is definitely NOT a word for sissies.

When we act in patience, we are coping with provocation, annoyance, misfortune, hardship and pain (or seasonal allergies) with serenity and fortitude, and we are doing so without irritation, whining or complaint. When we cultivate patience, we are acting from a place of grace, forbearance, acceptance and quiet confidence that "this too shall pass".

In the general scheme of things, allergies are no big deal, but patience is no small task when one has a blistering headache, her eyes are swelled shut, her ears are not functioning, her epidermis longs for a gentle going over with steel wool, and she looks like something out of a horror movie.

We can blame my sorry state on springtime and the manic fertility mechanisms of the native trees and grasses - the statuesque maples in the village, the cottonwood trees with their drifting puffs of proliferating thistledown, the cherry trees and their artfully blowing petals, the great oaks with their fine arty tassels blowing in the wind - all are doing a randy number on my aged and rather crotchety person. This is one of those times when I long for something like Karina's magnificent New Mexico desert.

Grumble, grumble, I am supposed to stay indoors, take my medication and be quiet. The joke of it is, that if I were out in the woods with Cassie and my camera right now, I would probably not be going through this to such a degree because the winds of the highlands would blow all this stuff away. Unfortunately, I would probably tumble into the gorge for want of balance and eyesight.

What am I doing as I repine here with tissues, tea, fruit juice, Claritin and Benadryl? Since I can't read anything at the moment, I am thinking about trees and their natural grandeur, their shapes and their colors and their songs. Please pardon my whining and my lack of patience, but this too shall pass.