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