Reminded of John Burroughs’ words, “You must have the bird in your heart before you can find it in the bush.”

You are in my heart. You are in my heart. 

our first real snow this season--a view from the 'driving bridge'  

One's Outermost House

Henry Beston, in his book the Outermost House, reflecting on his choice to stay in his little cottage on Cape Cod through the winter, wrote, “My house completed . . . I went there to spend a fortnight in September. The fortnight ending, I lingered on, and as the year lengthened into autumn, the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held me that I could not go.”


I'm asking myself what place won't let me go. What place hasn't let you go? I would love to read your answers.

It was a day when green grass went white and red apples took flight from the tree. What a delight to gaze into the world of winter and cardinals rewriting. 

appreciating the quiet places in my life . . .  

and the joy of sharing them 

mountaintop bog in November

Virgin's bower  

(please let me know if I have the ID wrong)

My only steps outside today

took me into the rain, into the

sleet that came after the snow,

though I never saw the white clumps

falling. They were simply congregating

on the lawn by the time my arms

were carrying wood. By the time

I had walked through the rain

feeling like I needed an awning

for a hat. By the time I had noted that

I hadn’t noted the raspberry bushes

or the precise moment

when pumpkins had mysteriously disappeared

from the porch always in need of a purpose. I can’t

count the number of ways one can use a slatted holding

place for something other than sitting.

What a wonderful thing: to sit

to wait for the life around you to forget

you’re breathing. to forget you may

be a threat. Children tell jokes without

restraint. Birds swing on the line

just above your head. You hear their wings

moving the air. And what’s most amazing

is that every time, it feels like the first.

Crawford Notch, NH 

listening

While the wind roars, I put my ear to the trunk of a pine and hear the air hissing up and down, fairly crawling over that great column with its skin of rough bark, and it sounds like rushing water. It is part of an inheritance that we have been long neglecting, and to our peril. 

John Hay, The Immortal Wilderness

The wind has been wicked the past few days. Until reading a passage from John Hay tonight, I never considered listening to it by placing my ear upon the trunk of a tree.

It made me think also about a radio show I heard about listening to tomatoes grow--how one can place a stethoscope to a tomato and hear it gurgling on the vine. As soon as the tomato is plucked, though, the gurgle instantly stops (or so the story told). I have always wanted to try listening to my garden grow. Now, I'm also inspired to listen to the wind differently.

I'm going to try placing my ear to the trunk of tree tomorrow. I'll let you know what I find, and please let me know if you try.

tonight, there was snow in the forest—only a dusting, but still . . .
the ground was hard, the road was empty, the ferns were limp

the sun—the sun is always glorious when it slips between the hills

goldenrod was seedless, milkweed was letting go

it was a good walk, it was a good day

the moon rising on my way home

Let me be here. Know here. Rest here.

bluets do bloom in November

I took this photograph five years ago--November 5, 2005. I had been paddling with my dearest friend, who would, by the next November, be diagnosed with cancer, and by November 2007, no longer be sharing this physical world with me. 

This post isn't about cancer. It is about returning to what we love. I continue to feel that pull, that desire to inhabit the world the same way he and I did, but for so many reasons, I can't. It isn't the same.  

Rationally, I understand this, but I still long for that rare and beautiful connection I felt with the natural world back then (which I think, now, was partly due to our shared enthusiasm for these places). 

I have made declarations each year since his passing about this being the year I will rediscover that life, this place, that passion, this sense of home I thought was ingrained. And maybe it is. Maybe I just need to tap back into it... like riding a bike after a zillion years of adulthood. (It should come back to me, right?) 

So, here I go again--declaring my return to the natural world, to the source of what feeds my happiness.  I hope this year you will see my (bicycling) silhouette in the distance--the sun setting, the gulls calling, the ocean crashing, my basket full of a picnic yet to be shared. 

Wish me a luck (or at least another visit to Bluet Hill by way of a paddle). :)

A Few Notes From a Walk at Noon

52°, briefly sunny... turning to a gray wool-sky (snow is in the forecast)

The shoulder of the dirt road was soft. I counted the number of needles in a clump, hoping to identify the pine sometime later. Mushrooms, the shape of ears, grew in rows along a trunk; I wanted to rub them between my fingers. Cedars warmed just enough to smell sweet along the bend. 

The cow did not charge me at the fence. The dog did not chase me near the mailbox. The loggers were not opening the woods. The hunters were not shooting rifles. 


It was a quiet day in November to be walking the old dirt road, arriving home to a swirl of wood smoke from the chimney, hot coffee in the carafe, minutes before the rain began again. I dreamed of turning everything off and lighting some candles.

in early November 

Driving Bridge

No matter how tired
I feel, how weary, I can
stand on the bridge,
open my palms towards the water
falling, and feel refreshed.

In those moments, maybe not even
minutes long, I know nothing
but the tumble of water, a foaming roar.

I hear nothing but the way gravity
pulls. An old Ford slows as if watching,
assessing the needs of woman
on a bridge.

This is a driving bridge,
not a walking bridge, not a
floating bridge, not a small two-
person bridge built in the woods.
This is a driving bridge.

I stand as close to the railing
as possible, knowing that I cannot hear
what is coming down the road.

early frost

Little Wings

If I could tell you about my day, I would tell you about the skim ice, about my favorite pond, how it’s closing in on itself starting from the shore. I would tell you about the beech trees, how they’re leafless, particularly leafless this year. Usually they hold on; they let their leaves rattle in the winter wind. But yesterday, the forest floor was made slick with them, pulverized in the path I was walking. In the gaps sprang goldenthread, as alive and green as in the spring; and it amazed me and freshened the bronzing ground, the dusty ferns, the smell of a marsh thickening.

I would save the story of the bird for another day, a day my eyes do not open to see the light. When I need memory to carry me forward, to remind me of where I’ve been--then, I would tell you about little wings.