Blues Skies and Snow

You awaken, and the world is magical, a different place - it snowed overnight, and the snow is still here this morning.

The sky is that perfect shade of blue that only appears in a northern winter. The landscape is dusted with fine white powder, the trees touched with a filigree of hoarfrost and the first icicles. The early sunlight shines through the icicles and turns everything platinum and gold.

The forgotten trail along the edge of the field beckons, and it calls in a siren voice that simply cannot be ignored. Come, come, come...

Dana and Happy Nattering

Here we are again, and so it begins - the seasonal dana or winter feeding of creatures large and small, feathered and furred, who dwell on the Two Hundred Acre Wood all year long and give us so much pleasure in each and every season.

For the last several days, we have been met right at the car by flocks of hungry chickadees, a woodpecker or three and a small number of nuthatches. Our avian friends have already emptied the feeders along the trail into the deep woods, and they are waiting exuberantly for their banquet table to be replenished.

Off we go, all of us together, the two-leggeds carrying suet, niger, millet and sunflower seed, the chickadees, woodpeckers and nuthatches dancing from branch to branch and chattering happily. Ravens circling overhead announce our too slow (for the birds anyway) progress along the meandering way through the trees.

Wreath of Good Fortune

Friday Ramble - Always a Doorway

Every once in a while, something drops into your life like a fragrant refreshing rain, and just when you need it. This week that something was the January 2010 issue of the Shambhala Sun, and in particular an article called "It's a Pity to Waste A Good Crisis" by John Tarrant of the Pacific Zen Institute.

The article exists in its entirety as a PDF file at Tarrant Roshi's own website here, and it is a powerful piece of writing, an eloquent reminder of something I always seem to forget. Happiness lies within us and not without—it is not irrevocably linked to exterior circumstances and exterior modes of being. We can embrace the ambiguous, the unknown and the ostensibly painful in our lives with open arms and rest in the sure knowing that there is beauty, balance, fruitfulness and an indescribable richness to be found in what Roshi calls "the warm darkness of uncertainty".

There are seven koans or sections in the Shambhala article, and I am particularly fond of No. 4: If You Are in a Predicament, There Will Be a Gate. It could not have resonated more if it had been written in a letter for my eyes only. We need to remember that mindfulness traces a powerful glowing doorway in the fabric of the universe, and that there is always such a doorway (or gate) waiting for us when we need it. I shall carry the words with me wherever I go as I contend with my own medical "stuff" in the weeks and months ahead, particularly the last sentence.

"... when my mind stopped reaching out and fell back into the warm dark of uncertainty, time stretched out infinitely on either side and there was a pool of joy that seemed bottomless—joy in breathing, joy in hearing the birds in the cold before dawn. Having cancer was much more exciting than sitting in an armchair watching the game on Sunday. And everything I looked at had the aspect of tenderness and delicacy. I looked into the checkout clerk’s eyes and saw the universe looking back."

Simply magnificent...

December's Moon of Long Nights

This morning, I was tempted to indulge in a few verses of very bad homegrown poetry, but refrained from doing so - I wanted to honor in a net of inadequate words what appeared at first glance to be the last full moon of 2009. As it turns out, December blesses us with two full moons this year, and the thirteenth moon falls on the very last day of the month and this calendar year.

There is something poignant, telling and rather melancholy (or wabi sabi) about viewing December's moon through the bare branches of the old ash tree in the garden as Spencer and I did last evening. My beloved old tree is slowly expiring, or as Wendell Berry once put it, "passing into the fund of things". Branches and twigs have been falling away for some time, and I have no idea whether she will exist next year in December. That makes me a little sad, for I have been watching the moon rise through her eloquent outstretched arms for many years.

We also know this moon as the: Ashes Fire Moon, Bauhinia Moon, Bear Moon, Beginning of the Winter Moon, Big Bear's Moon, Big Winter Moon, Birch Moon, Center Moon's Younger Brother, Cold Moon, Cold Time Moon, Bitter Moon, Deer Shed Their Horns Moon, Dumannos Moon, Eccentric Moon, Elder Moon, Frozen over Moon, Heavy Snow Moon, Holy Moon, Hellebore Moon, Her Winter Houses Moon, Hunting Moon, Ice Lasts All Day Moon, Ice Moon, Little Finger Moon, Little Spirits Moon, Long Snows Moon, Middle of Winter Moon, Moon Before Yule, Moon of Cold, Moon of Long Nights, Moon of Much Cold, Moon of Popping Trees, Moon of Putting Your Paddle Away in the Bush, Moon of Respect, Moon When Buffalo Cow's Fetus Is Getting Large, Moon When Deer Shed Their Horns, , Moon When Little Black Bears Are Born, Moon When the Young Fellow Spreads the Brush, Moon When the Wolves Run Together, Moon When the Sun Has Traveled South to His Home to Rest Before He Starts Back on His Journey North, Narcissus Moon, Night Moon, Oak Moon, Paulownia Moon, Peach Moon, Poinsettia Moon, Popping Trees Moon, Poppy Moon, Real Goose Moon, Sap Moon , Sjelcasen Moon, Small Spirits Moon, Snow Moon, Star Frost Moon, Turning Moon, Thirteenth Moon, Under Burn Moon, White Orchid Tree Moon, Winter Maker Moon, Winter Moon, World Darkness Moon, Yule Moon

Winter Light

A Cold Frosting

On this first day of December, the north wind has a bite which awakened Spencer and I the moment we stepped outside to greet the day with a gassho.

A slight frosting of yesterday's snow still remains on the old box elder (Manitoba maple) tree in the south-east corner of the garden behind the little blue house in the village. With its thousand and one winding branches and artfully curling twigs, the old tree is a thicket all by itself, and I am not alone in loving it - the tree is the preferred perch for crows just after sunrise.

Fluffed up against the wind, the dark birds wait for their breakfast (whatever remains of Spencer's meal from the previous evening) to be brought out and placed under the tree. We think of it as an offering of sorts, and the crows are always pleased. Is our morning group "a murder of crows"? We prefer to call the wily assembly " a rowdy of crows".

Happy December!

First Snow

If only you could hear
the sound of snow...
Hakuin Ikaku

Ah, the first snows of the season, turning the realm white, making everything pristine, crystalline and sparkling...

Snow fell on the village overnight as promised, and a light snow is falling now. With winter precipitation in the forecast for this whole week, it is safe to say that the long white season has arrived, and that the residual grays and browns of late autumn will be disappearing under a blanket of snow in the next day or so.

It is difficult to express the feelings that rise with the first snowfall, but the words wabi sabi describe them as well as any expression may be said to do that. There is radiant stillness, a kind of tranquil melancholy; a non-attachment beyond all coming and going which honors tathata or suchness, the turning of the seasons and the perfect spontaneous unfolding of the world around us.

At the same time there is joy, just to be here and witnessing this first visual manifestation of winter. Across the years and countless wind tossed seasons, Hakuin's ecstatic poem says it all.

Turning

There are not too many moments like this one left in our immediate future, for temperatures will plunge this evening, and there will be snow.

The Old Wild Mother, wearing the robes of the long cold white season, will come striding over the hill in her seven league boots, gently rounding the contours of lanes and streets, village homes and parked vehicles with new snow, dusting the branches of the old trees with sugar, lacing pools in the park with elaborate ice patterns.

Parts of myself cringe at the thought of the cold and wind and ice and snow on its way - the photographer rejoices and welcomes her old friend.