backwater

Cloudy and cold. It was great to be in Chicago for Christmas. On Christmas Eve, we went to the suburbs for a family gathering. I pointed out the planets Jupiter and Venus, and was asked what else I could see. I saw the constellation Orion rising in the east, but couldn't point out much else. The light pollution washed out all but the brightest of stars. Driving back to Vermont the other night, the sky was clear, and the winter stars were blazing out of the blackness, thousands of them. The stars in the Orion Nebula twinkled like lights on a Christmas tree, shining out of some darkened living room far far away. We definitely live in a backwater here on the other side of the creek, but there are some advantages.

the Orion Nebula from jlc walker on flickr

The Other Side of the Creek-NOT

yearning

Snow. I saw this when I was over at the Rutland recycling center a couple of weeks ago. There was something very poignant about it. I can remember as a young boy staring intently at the stars on Christmas Eve, deeply yearning for something I couldn't name. Maybe that yearning exists in all of us. Happy Holidays!

May all beings be filled with happiness and peace.
May all beings be safe and secure.
May all beings be healthy in body and mind.
May all beings live joyfully with friendliness and ease.
Lovingkindness Meditation
Vermont Zen Center

here and now

Cloudy. It's the winter solstice. The days will start to get longer now. Allyn has turned on the seat warmer in the Subaru. I don't have that kind of luxury in the Honda. It seems there's a Christmas food package arriving almost every day. We eat some then Allyn hides it.

Each drifting snowflake
falls nowhere
but here and now
Muso Soseki
Zen page a day calendar

crystalline pipe organs

Clear. Crack of chestnuts roasting on the wood stove. Boots, coats, hats, gloves, growing like mushrooms in the kitchen. Designs of ice appearing from rock ledges along roadsides. To me, they have always looked like crystalline pipe organs.

candy canes

Rain. Candy canes appearing. Santa making an appearance at the mall. Wrapping paper coming out of the closet. Helping Allyn put lights on the lilac bush.

crackle

Clear and cold. Crackle of birch bark in the wood stove. Getting mailing boxes out of the attic. At work there is a sunny side to the parking lot, and a shady side. During the summertime, the shady side is desirable. I'm now parking on the sunny side

snowflakes

 from Zweter Wind on flickr

Season of snowflakes.

12/11/09
Dark coming to work today, 19 degrees. Almost two years ago I was walking over to production in the snow. Individual flakes were drifting slowly out of the sky. I noticed that some of the flakes were spinning, like a propeller. As always it was very exciting for me to observe something new in the natural world. While I have seen snow spinning out of the sky since then, I have never seen that "propeller" effect in exactly the same way.
It is dark now when I leave work, but the parking lot is illuminated. On Monday night the snow was falling slowly out of the sky. I stopped to look for spinning snowflakes. I figured that if I was able to look at a flake high above me, and follow it all the way down, I might see it spinning.
So there I was on the walkway at work, staring up into the sky. Don't really know for how long. Suddenly I noticed a couple of co-workers walking by me on the way to their cars. They didn't say anything, but they gave off that "you're really weird, Jim" aura that Shawn does so well. I panicked, and quickly opened the door to my car except that it wasn't my car, it was the Tuttle company car, a Honda Accord. I made my way to my black Honda Civic, and opened the door except that it was actually Shirley's car (which looks exactly like mine). I finally limped across the parking lot to my car, and drove home. Never did see any "spinners." Like Joni Mitchell said, "Something's lost, but something's gained in living every day."



 

decorations

Cloudy. Christmas decorations and party at work. End of the deer hunting season, always a relief. Limbs of pine trees weighed down by snow. Sound of tires on ice and snow.

soup

Cloudy. During the winter, Allyn and I make meals on the weekend to last us through the week. Last weekend we had tortellini and potato leek soup. Christmas wreath on the front door. Christmas cards arriving at work. Handel's Messiah performed at the Grace Congregational Church in Rutland.

icicles

Icicles appearing.

12/9/10
The other day I was walking over to production, and passed by the bird feeder they have over there. I spied an icicle hanging from the bottom of the feeder. Honestly it stopped me dead in my tracks. It had been so long since I'd seen an icicle. It wasn't that many weeks ago that if you wanted to see an icicle you would either have to take a look in the back of the freezer, or take a trip a long way to the north, or go an even longer distance to the south. Yet here it was, ordinary and glorious.
I felt the same sense of wonder I feel in the spring when seeing a rhododendron, or observing a scarlet maple leaf in the fall; the miraculous shining out of the ordinary. It actually seems to happen almost every day.

cold

Clear & cold. Film of ice on puddles along Quality Lane. Raking the leaves away before the snow. Glasses steam up when coming in from the cold. Putting Allyn's car in the garage.
Cold you may be
but don't warm yourself by the fire,
Buddha of snow!
Sokan

Carolyn

For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?
Sandy Denny

first snow

pastel snow

The seasons in Vermont are always changing, but never so dramatically as on the day of the first snowfall. Smell of  snow in the air. Sound of the snowplow. Tracks of the snow blower on the walkway at work. Wet snow sliding off the windshield like a fried egg out of a frying pan. Happy Birthday, Pip!

Venus

Moon Venus & Jupiter 11/30/2008

from Dave Schumaker on flickr

Buddha's Enlightenment Day & snow. The other day I was over near the production building at sunset. I could see Venus starting to set over the Taconics in the west, and Jupiter rising over the Green Mountains in the east. Knowing that all the planets revolve around the sun on the same plane, I could visualize it, put it all together. I could see the path that the Earth was on in relation to the sun, and the other planets, and got a brief glimpse of the vast scale of it all. The Buddha was enlightened when he glanced upon Venus after seven days of intense meditation, and after countless lives of devotion to the welfare of all sentient beings.

When I attained complete, perfect enlightenment and unexcelled awakening, I attained nothing at all.
The Buddha
Zen page a day calendar

hum

Rainy & warm. Taping the Tree of Remembrance ceremony at hospice this evening. Christmas trees on cars, and for sale in lots all over Rutland. Calendar boutique appearing in the Mall, and calendars available from the usual vendors at work. Hum of snow tires on the road

Irene

Cloudy & warm. I noticed something when driving to work the other day. It is early December and some of the corn fields along the Otter Creek have not been harvested. I understand that when these fields were flooded during Hurrican Irene, they were made unusable by all the pollution (oil, chemicals, and the like) that were carried within the floodwaters that inundated these fields. We will be dealing with the aftereffects of the hurricane for many years to come

winter issue

from rusty one on flickr

Clear and cool. Winter issue of Vermont Life Magazine, and clementines for sale in stores. Wearing boots to work on snowy days. Tracks in the snow. The winter constellation, Orion, rising solemnly in the east in the early evening.

If it's winter, one must have a mind of winter-indeed, one must be winter-to be here. That is, not thinking of spring, not longing for summer, for something that doesn't exist now, here. This mind isn't reaching for some other place.

And if it's summer, one must have a mind of summer. There is no other place. We're forever here.

Steve Hagen

Zen page a day calendar

advent

from flagondry on flickr

Rainy & cool. This blog is essentially about the many seasons of Vermont. We are now entering the advent of the Christmas season. Sights of poinsettias and Christmas lights in the neighborhood. Taste of Hood's Golden eggnog with nutmeg (I had a cup for you, Pip).  Festive sound of the Salvation Army bell, and the smell of pine from wreaths outside of supermarkets.

hammered

Rainy & warm. Christmas music in stores. Ice melt for sale at Walmart. Putting winter tires on the Honda. College basketball season has started. My Blue Devils got hammered by the Ohio State Buckeyes last night

who knows where the time goes

Another warm day. The leaves on the willows are turning. They are the last to go.

Across the evening sky, all the birds are leaving.
But how can they know it's time for them to go?
Before the winter fire, I'll still be dreaming.
I have no thought of time.
For who knows where the time goes?
Who knows where the time goes?
Sandy Denny

back from Thanksgiving

Granville, Ohio

Windy and warm. Back from Thanksgiving in Ohio. Got to spend it with Allyn's very cool family including Erin. My smashed potatoes were the highlight of the meal as usual. Got to show my sister-in-law the Andromeda galaxy through some binoculars in the back yard.

Thank you

Rain & snow. Thanksgiving decorations at work. Cranberries, gravy, and stuffing on sale in the supermarkets. Over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go (OK, it's actually Larke & Joe's house) for Thanksgiving, the best holiday of the year. Happy Thanksgiving!

If the only prayer
you say in your
entire life is
"Thank you," that
would suffice.
Meister Eckhart
Zen page a day calendar

sun pillar

Clear & cold. Driving by a field in New Haven the other day that had been full of pumpkins just a few weeks ago. It has been plowed under, and is totally bare, waiting for spring. I bought a little Canon camera shortly after I started putting photos on this blog. I keep it with me most of the time. I saw this the other day when I was driving to work. It's called a sun pillar. It occurs when ice crystals meet the rising sun. Another small miracle from here on the other side of the creek

smoke

Cloudy. With the return to Standard time, it is dark when leaving work. Lights illuminate the walkway between the two buildings. Smoke coming out of the chimney. Sound of gunfire in the woods. Pick up trucks along roadsides and fields as deer hunting season is underway.

signs of spring

Already there are signs of spring. Four bluebirds examining the bird's nests in the back yard. Erin & Andy are getting married!

oak leaf

Clear and cold. Two weeks ago on a Sunday I got home from the Zen Center in the afternoon. Allyn was a couple of hours behind me, returning from visiting her mother in Ohio. I wanted to finish cleaning up the mess from the various wood piles I had created in the back yard before she returned. I hauled bark and chips from the back to the burn pile we have in a field nearby. As I was returning from the burn pile, I saw two oak leaves high in the sky down by the bridge. They must have been 100 feet in the air. I couldn't feel any breeze, it must have been above the tree line. But here they came toward me, slowly fluttering in the air. They would start to head down, but would catch the thermal again, and rise up to the original level. One finally headed to earth along the road, but the other kept coming, fluttering, falling, rising; dancing on the wind. I had watched as I was hauling the wheelbarrow back, but the leaf had been in the air a long time, a number of minutes at least, longer than any leaf I had ever seen before. I finally put down the wheelbarrow & gave the leaf my full attention. It kept coming; floating above the road, over the back yard and the house, over the front yard, and finally over my head, heading east. It parted ways with the zephyr along a fence line and slowly fell to earth, landing in Allyn's flower garden near the old apple tree. As my eyes finally parted from the oak leaf I looked up and saw the waxing moon, almost full, like mother of pearl, rising over the Green Mountains.

Soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day...we become seekers.
Peter Matthiessen
Zen page a day calendar

mars in leo

Mars & M44 by horstm42 on flickr

Rainy. There have been a few mornings recently when I was able to view the constellations visible at that time of day. Over a period of days, I had unexpected difficulty identifying the constellation Leo. I thought I could find the right triangle, but couldn't find the backward question mark that is half the constellation. Finally, all the stars came into view in the expected places. When I found the backward question mark, it was immediately apparent that there was a fairly large celestial object within Leo that wasn't supposed to be there. It had to be a planet, and I guessed that it must be Mars. Sure enough, I found out that Mars is indeed in the constellation Leo at this time. Mars looks very much like a star. It was gratifying and surprising to realize that I knew this piece of sky well enough to know when something was out of place. I couldn't have done that a couple of years ago.

cracked corn

 Wood's Pond in Brandon

Wind and rain. There is a shiny metallic quality to streams and ponds at this time of year. I don't really know if it is something that only exists this time of year or not. This is when I notice it.

Post Script
I stopped along Route 7 to take this photo. When I got out of the car I was surprised to see that the road sides were covered with cracked corn. I couldn't for the life of my figure out why. As I drove away, the mystery was answered. Large silage trucks were heading north on Route 7 filled to the brim with chaff and cracked corn. Just the other day I drove by this spot heading north. The field immediately south of the pond was filled with Canada Geese. I'll bet they were dining on cracked corn.

blackbird

from Laura Whitehead on flickr

Whoosh of a flock of blackbirds overhead.

11/6/09

Cloudy. At this time of year, you see large flocks of blackbirds gathering (or starlings, or grackels), hundreds of them. The size of the flocks is a little unsettling, like nature is out of balance. I have seen these flocks descend on the trees in the back woods. It is almost like a plague of locusts. I was reading about them in my Peterson's Field Guide and it said, " their song sounds like the creak of a rusty door hinge, penetrating."

The other day I went into a convenience store in Brandon, and there was a large flock screeching from the trees across the road. When I came out, one of the blackbirds was in the parking lot picking at crumbs of bread. It's feathery coat was a lustrous jet black from its beak to its tail. It glistened in the sun as it moved about. It was so sleek and aerodynamic. It was beautiful.

This is a lesson I keep having to relearn. Just because something is common doesn't mean it isn't beautiful. Ragweed, blackbirds, snowflakes can, at once, be ordinary...and miraculous. Many years ago I found a young starling which had dental floss hopelessly wrapped around and cutting into its leg. I ended up taking it to the Rutland Veterinary Clinic. My neighbor, Louella Day, a native Vermonter, was on duty. She took a look at it and said, "Well it just a starling, but let's see if we can take care of it.", and she did. She had the right idea.

You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

Paul McCartney

stick season

Cloudy but warm. I saw a squirrel's nest high in a tree in Shelburne the other day. With the leaves coming off the trees, nests become visible. As often seems to happen when viewing the natural world, once you see one, you start to see them everywhere. Stick season has begun. The ice hockey season has started at Castleton State College. Time to switch from my windbreaker to my winter coat except I couldn't find it. After looking everywhere at home I figured there was only one other place it could be. When visiting the Zen Center I looked in the closet, and sure enough, there it was. I wonder how many months it has been there?

an old friend

from sermoa on flickr

Clear. Another beautiful day. Temps in the 60's. The days are getting shorter. The darkness is getting longer. The nearly full moon and Jupiter were rising in tandem over the Green Mountains when I left work last night. I have been thinking about Venus. I haven't seen the planet in months which is very unusual. It can usually be found as either the morning star or evening star, but it just hasn't been there. I actually called Pete the other night to find out what's going on. As I headed home down Cold River Road at dusk, there it was, very low in the sky over the Taconics. I just got a glimpse of it before it disappeared behind the mountains. I called Pete again. He said Venus had been low in the sky as a morning star in the east, and had been blocked from view by the mountains there. That made sense. Seeing it was like greeting the return of an old friend. The full moon, the "Beaver" moon is tonight.

chapstick

yin & yang of woolly caterpillars

found under an oak log

Another beautiful day. Bringing wood in to dry near the wood stove. Wood rack and other implements down from the attic. Season of Purell and chapstick. Flu shots available at drugstores and supermarkets.

season of frost

Another beautiful day. Finished stacking the wood pile on Sunday. When you get to the final few pieces, the mice that have been living there scurry away. There are seasonal signs of the times which are small but momentous. The other day there was frost on the windshield. Had to haul the ice scraper out of the trunk of the car, and there was the sound of scraping the windshield for the first time in a long time.

tamaracks

Clear. We have had a long stretch of unusually good weather for this time of year. Corn fields have been reduced to stubble, and with the falling of the leaves, vistas have opened up in a way we haven't seen since early in the spring. The tamaracks are turning. They are one of the last to go. They resemble the remains in the asparagus patch both in shape and in color. Allyn was in Ohio for the weekend, and I did my daily meditation in front of the wood stove on cold November mornings.

miracles

I know nothing else but miracles...
To me every hour of the light and dark is
a miracle,
Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,
Every square yard of the surface of the earth
is spread with miracles,
Every foot of the interior swarms with miracles.
Walt Whitman
Zen page a day calendar

white tailed deer

Clear. I belong to a sitting group that convenes three mornings a week in Rutland. I drive by this field on Cold River Road on my way from the sittings to work. The field is full of goldenrod and is a beautiful gold/yellow in August & September. By October it has turned to brown. It looks to me like the coat of a white tailed deer as does much of the countryside now with the varying shades of brown on display.

flannel night gowns

Clear. Trick or treaters running the roads in West Rutland. Allyn is making her transition to colder weather. Winter clothes have been brought down from the attic. She has turned on the seat warmer in her Subaru. Flannel night gowns have replaced the evening wear of summer.
There are only two ways
to live your life. One is
as though nothing is a
miracle. The other is
as though everything
is a miracle.
Albert Einstein
Zen page a day calendar

The last function of reason is to
recognize that there is an infinity
of things which surpass it.
Blaise Pascal
Zen page a day calendar

as autumn dusk descends

sunrise on the other side of the creek

Snow! Sun setting further in the south along the Taconic range on the drive home. Going through what feels like a cathedral of orange  & burnt orange when driving through a grove of beech trees coming in to Ira. Stacking wood in the back. Middle schoolers waiting for the bus in the darkness & gloom on Curtis Avenue.

A heart subdued,

Yet poignant sadness

is so deeply felt:

A snipe flies over the marsh

as autumn dusk descends.

Saigyo

Zen page a day calendar

piles of leaves

Rainy. The time of the year when the darkness of some of the trunks of the trees are accentuated by the contrast with the bright yellow and orange leaves (not in this picture). Piles of leaves out in the streets. Signs for the Haunted House in Pittsford. They've been doing this for 31 years. Giant pumpkins out in front of Glenn Story's house in Shelburne.

averted imagination

M74 by Alsand on flickr

Rainy. Last night I got up about midnight to finish my sitting for the Term Student program at the Center. I took a glance out the window, and was surprised to see that the sky was clear. It was supposed to be cloudy. I've had two galaxies on my shopping list for some weeks now to finish viewing all 110 items from the Messier catalogue. Quite a feat if I do say so myself.

I quietly removed my telescope from the bedroom where Allyn was sleeping, and went outside. I was hoping Pete was up, but no luck. The red light wasn't on in his garage as it always is when he's out star gazing. I set my sights for M74, a head on spiral galaxy in Pisces. Is is considered to be the hardest member of the Messier catalogue to observe. The astronomer Stephen James O'Meara calls it the phantom. I didn't see anything. I went to M77 in Cetus. This is also considered to be a hard catch, but I found it right away. The sky was very clear. There was a deer snorting at me from the blackness. Back to M74. I scanned the appropriate area in Pisces very slowly. I have to admit that from time to time I seemed to pick up just the slightest wisp of light. I think I saw it. In situations like this, Pete would say you have to use your averted imagination (Averted vision. Get it? Astronomer humor).

When I came in, I put a check next to M77 in my star atlas. I put a question mark next to M74. I would want his confirmation anyway, but I want Pete to be with me when I finish up my journey through the Messier catalog. It never would have started in the first place without him.

twilight commute

Cloudy. Aspen leaves quaking in the wind. This is the time of the year when my commute happens at twilight, in the morning and the evening. I also notice flocks of crows doing the same thing, leaving the woods in the morning, and returning to them in the evening. I imagine this is a pattern they follow all year long, moving at twilight, but it is only in the fall and the spring that I notice them because essentially my commute matches up with theirs.

ordinary

 sumac

Clear. There are a number of themes that continue to recur on this blog. One of the main ones is how something that is considered to be quite ordinary can be extraordinarily beautiful. Consider the sumac bush. I can't think of any bush or tree that is considered to be lower on the pecking order than the sumac. But there are few trees that are more colorful during foliage season. I wonder why it doesn't get the credit it is seemingly due? The only tree that matches it in terms of reds is the amur maple which are now turning up in Charlotte.