promise

I haven't decided if it's calling me forward or taking me back. 

Either way, life is good.  

A Merry Little Christmas

Wishing you and your loved ones 

the warmest of holidays.

shhhh... things are changing 

coppery moon notes

If you missed the lunar eclipse (as I did), you can pop over to Steve's blog and check it out. He has an incredible photograph of the eclipsed moon surrounded by stars (something I've never seen for myself). Absolutely delightful!

We'll be announcing our next TAREC adventure soon and hope you'll join us. : )

On the Night of the Lunar Eclipse

(the first lunar eclipse to overlap with winter solstice in 456 years)

Like a child awaiting reindeer hooves, I lie awake listening for the fullness of the moon. I can’t describe what I’m listening for, but I know I’ll recognize its call.

I hear small scurryings behind the wall. This is the sound of a farm. An old farm in winter. In Vermont. Sometimes it moans. Sometimes, it creaks. Sometimes, it can even make me believe someone is rearranging the pots in the kitchen from where I’m lying upstairs. I call it “the wind through the rafters,” but it’s more like a ghost through my soul. Blowing. Bending. At all hours of the night when the moon is supposed to be full. When the shadow is supposed to cross over the face of what Mika referred to as Grandmother Moon. A lunar eclipse would call me; I was sure.

I lie in bed waiting for shadows to cross the ceiling. Full moons know just how to push branches through a room.

The dark arms don’t come, but there is a glow. A glowing my feet cannot resist beyond the window. They want to walk me into the snow. I listen for the river, but there’s nothing. My bare feet then mark the steps of wood—a soft thudding, one by one.

I stop at the living room window, stare through panes of glass. It is light enough to see the corrugated roof of the barn and the platform of an unfinished treehouse out in the apple. My ankles are caught in a draft, cold. My thighs are warm from the stove. For minutes I try guessing through the wool in the sky where the moon is hanging full.

One year I gave him a wooden painted raven not knowing it was the symbol for friend. He opened it on winter solstice before I knew his home.

But I don’t think about that as I walk the perimeter of clapboard walls, dark blue suggesting nothing of iris, under the hazy glow. I notice the way ambient light spreads like steam through the woods. The open woods. My feet are in clogs and unsteady on powder dusting the road.

I hear the river. I know the dam. I hear the water rushing over the fall.

Past the dried hydrangea, a papery cream barely lit near the old stone wall, I walk carefully in my robe. This is the perfect night for dreaming under the suggestion of a moon. The gauzy light just enough to make one feel drowsy.

I cannot place the source of it in the thickness of the sky. I just thank it for inviting me to walk in the brisk air of the night, reminding me, again, there is more than one (of everything).

And, now, I am here (so blessed). I carve a heart in the powdered drape of his driver’s side window.

Looking Ahead: 2011

In a brief post on November 27th, I posted a quote from Henry Beston about his choice to remain on Cape Cod through the winter, “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.”

In much the same way, years ago I found myself unable to leave a certain area of woods that encompass a swamp, a marsh, and a small glacier-made pond in Vermont.

In the fall of 2003, inspired by Beston’s book, The Outermost House, desiring but unable to relocate to the coast, I decided instead to “adopt” this place in Vermont that held my attention. I would be able to spend time alone there, frequently, making field notes and considering questions such as What does it mean to have a sense of place? Can one have a relationship with a place that is as significant as she shares with another human being?

Over the next 18 months, I kept notes and journals about my time spent in those woods, or on the pond. Then, I spent six months or more writing a collection of essays and poetry from those notes, thoughts, and memories.  It was a delightful undertaking and often included my best friend, the one I’ve mentioned passed away in 2007. 

The few people who read my mostly-unpublished collection asked what would happen to my relationship with that place if the person who introduced me to it, and occasionally shared his time with me there, was no longer in my life. I assumed my relationship with those woods would carry on. In 2005, it seemed like an obvious answer to a frivolous question.

Since his passing in May of 2007, I have found myself thinking about this place and my relationship with it. I have returned to those woods but not as often. I have paddled there once or twice a year, a fraction of the time I would have paddled in years prior. For many reasons, some of which I have yet to name, I have not allowed myself to deeply re-enter that place or my memories. 

My mind keeps returning to those essays—to the commitment I made in 2003 to deeply invest myself somewhere—as my starting place. Why not begin by going back?

So that’s what I plan to do. Beginning in mid-January 2011, I will be making regular treks back to this dear friend of mine, these woods, asking myself again what it means to have a relationship with a place, what it means to know a landscape (or desire to “know”). I will be asking myself what my responsibility is in that relationship, and I hope along the way, I will also have much to celebrate.

I look forward to sharing whatever comes as I revisit a place I’ve loved, deeply loved, as if it also my first time there.

Thank you for listening.

winter is gathering in the curves of trees

It's Official: TAREC & You're Invited to Join

Please consider joining our: Together Apart Random Event Club  (TAREC)

It all started when my friend, Sandy, from gardenpath, made an innocent comment about wishing she had done a full moon snowshoe. That led me to the idea that we should "go together" (separately--as she lives in Maine; I live in Vermont) and invite our friends.  

The idea would be to commit to an event on the same day, such as a full moon snowshoe, and then blog about it the following day, linking to others who participated (as a way of "sharing" the event). 

Steve, my friend over at Recycled Photons, jumped on board with awesome enthusiasm and is leading the way for our first event: the upcoming Lunar Eclipse (Dec. 20-21). 

We will continue to identify fun and relatively universal events to share throughout the year. We'd love for you to join us. The more, the merrier. : )

Please email me if you have any questions and/or suggested events we should include in the future. 

Cheers to good friends sharing great times in the near future,

Lené

a few leaves remain

"All through autumn we hear a double voice: one says everything is ripe; the other says everything is dying.  The paradox is exquisite."

                                                            --Gretel Ehrlich, The Solace of Open Spaces

Columbia University Press

I just have to share the most delightful surprise I've had in a long time. : )

Today, I received a 20-pound box of books, free, from Columbia University Press. I'm a CUP fan on Facebook. A few days ago, they offered the first 17 people to respond, a free 20-pound box of books. I was lucky number 3.

The first of 18 books that I plan to read: Bright Wings: An Illustrated Anthology of Poems About Birds.

Happy Friday! Wishing you all the delight of paper and words and beautiful images to begin your weekend too. : )

This photograph was taken several years ago near a swamp that has since transitioned to a semi-marsh. There is no standing water now--no reflections. Last summer, as I approached the edge, there were no splashing frogs; they did not squeak.  I wonder about them. Where they once lived, now a field of cattails thrives, and small shrubs.

And this winter, this winter is berry-less. The staghorn sumac has been stripped. I'm not sure what conditions encouraged the birds to consume its low-quality berries this fall (they usually wait until spring on their flight back north to eat them, when other food sources are scarce), but they did, they wiped them out.  I noticed the honeysuckle bushes in town are also bare. I can't help but think about March and April, the birds returning.

yes! : )

"In a simple bow from the waist before the nest of the horned lark, you are able to stake your life, again, in what you dream."

--Barry Lopez

I keep returning to this final line of Barry Lopez's Preface to Arctic Dreams, saying to myself, Yes! Hold this understanding. Start moving in the world with this awareness again. 

(Nearly every line of this book moves me. If you find yourself contemplating your next winter read, I would highly recommend Arctic Dreams.)

Why Do You Photograph? (inspired by Jay Goodrich)

Jay Goodrich wrote a post today on Art Wolfe's blog titled, "Why Do You Photograph?" It inspired me to briefly consider why I shoot, and I wanted to encourage you all to also consider the question. 

Please let me know if you write a "Why I Photograph" post. I'm interested to know what inspires you. I've been thinking a lot about this question of "why we create" in relation to writing, but I haven't considered how it applies to photography until today.

Here's my first response... I'm sure I'll revise it after having more time to consider my answer. :)

---

Why do I take photographs?  

Pictures make people happy. They make me happy. I shoot because it makes me smile.

A day—camera in hand—is never a bad day, even when I make bad pictures. Bad pictures are still better than none. They remind me I went somewhere. I saw something. There was delight in the world to share. To remember. To remember also that there is something to be learned from days of taking bad pictures—about things we can’t possess. About the necessity we have to feel—to sense the shifting of the wind, the softness of moss, the scent of cedars warming under the sun. To be there. I shoot to remind myself I am there, I’ve been there; I shoot to bring myself back. And if I’m lucky, I might take a photograph that inspires someone to join me on that trail.

from the edge of a reservoir

at first there is no water, there is no land

there is only                          

white 

you can somehow stick your fingers through

& wiggle, maybe see the tips before they numb

in the cold of an early morning fog

a part of you wants to see what lies beyond

the weightless veil you cannot move

another part decides

you like living in a cloud

then (as always) a mountain range you’ve forgotten

will inhale, deeply pulling that curtain before your eyes

rusty goldenrods, tufts of grass

    

a few lemon-colored leaves on smoky branches

a breeze you cannot feel, water blue

the color of the sky, as clear as ever in your life

only a whisper of that early white remains, sliding

towards the narrow place

where you must paddle

left or right

In the Heart of It ... December

PS Would anyone be interested in committing to a full moon hike/snowshoe/ski this winter? Sandy got me thinking about how fun it would be if we all picked a moon and went out at the same time. We could post about it the following day and link to the other "full mooners." It would almost be like we shared it. :)   Just a thought.

monday morning . . .

snowflakes teeter towards the ground
     (can I call them chubby?)
crows are cawing
reading Arctic Dreams while sipping coffee
thoughts of fishing drift in and out... and other
     near impossibilities

this winter I will make the full moon snowshoe
     I've been dreaming about

"Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light." 

 -Theodore Roethke

My friend, Sandy, at gardenpath, posted a series of winter grasses and wildflowers that inspired me to pull out my grass identification book by Lauren Brown. I've wanted to learn the names of grasses for years, but I just haven't devoted the time to it. Wildflowers get my attention first. Then ferns. I try naming the trees, but I think I'm often wrong (I started making up my own names *wink*). I find myself walking in the fall, admiring the seed heads of grasses, but rarely have I turned the page of my book. Until now. : )

For fun, I pulled out some of my old grass photos trying to identify a few this morning. If I've got it right, this one is Rye (Secale cereale), the same grain we use for baking bread. I photographed it on a frosty morning in November near Crawford Notch, New Hampshire.

Rye (Secale cereale)

(please correct me if I'm wrong) 

Not Far From Yesterday

For a moment, we have given up on words as a way of sharing space. From the bow, I cannot even see him.  The boat lightly trembles from a fluctuation of weight as he adjusts his posture. I adjust mine. The cane seat slightly gives under my movement. I notice the slightest bit of water has run into a line from my shoes. Even the sound of my breath is loud in this world where tamaracks glow. There’s something about having to settle into the stillness.  But we get there.  And time stops.