Merry Christmas!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpFudDAYqxY

Skating away to Buffalo for a few days. Merry Christmas!

solstice

Ponds frozen over. Sound of the snowplow. Yesterday was the winter solstice. The days will start to get longer now.

It is in midwinter that I sometimes glean from my pines something more than woodlot politics, and the news of the wind and weather. This is especially likely to happen on some gloomy evening when the snow has buried all irrelevant detail, and the hush of elemental sadness lies heavy upon every living thing. Nevertheless, my pines, each with his burden of snow, are standing ramrod-straight, rank upon rank, and in the dusk beyond I sense the presence of hundreds more. At such times I feel a curious transfusion of courage.

December
A Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold

chapstick

Winter settling in. Winter coats, boots, hats, and gloves accumulating in the kitchen. One pair of gloves I pulled out had wood chips on them from the last firewood season. Throw rug out of mothballs on which to deposit snowy boots when coming inside. Sighing of the iron pot on the wood stove when getting up in the middle of the night. Season of chapstick.

In the deepest snows, the path which I used from the highway to my house...might have been represented by a meandering dotted line, with wide intervals between the dots. For a week of even weather I took exactly the same number of steps, and of the same length, coming and going, stepping deliberately and with the precision of a pair of dividers in my own deep tracks,- to such routine the winter reduces us,- yet often they were filled with heaven's own blue.

Former inhabitants and winter visitors
Walden
Henry Davis Thoreau

Tis the season

Christmas lights prominent at night. Sound of the Salvation Army bell. Christmas music in stores. Stocking hung by the wood stove. Christmas cards coming and going.

walk in the woods

Home alone and gobbled up too many Christmas cookies. Decided to take a snowy walk through the woods on the Crossroads to work them off. Muffled sound of traffic offset by raucous calls of blue jays. Sound of cracking branches and jack hammering of a woodpecker deep in the woods. Tracks of rabbits in the snow. Sounds of snowflakes bouncing off my winter coat. Even spotted a white tufted snowman.

You can observe a lot by watching.
Yogi Berra
Zen page-a-day calendar

snow!

Back from sesshin and the world is transformed. We had about a foot of snow when I was gone. Six degrees below zero yesterday morning. Allyn has enjoyed great cross country skiing.

After a still winter I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what-how-when-where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face and no questions on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight.

The Pond in Winter
Walden
Henry David Thoreau

rare Saturday post

Gone for a week.

Buddha's Enlightenment Day

Wonder of wonders! All living beings are Buddhas, endowed with wisdom and virtue, but because men's minds have become inverted through delusive thinking, they fail to perceive this.
Gautama Buddha

Devils!

from somewhere on flickr years ago

It's early in the college basketball season, but my Duke Blue Devils are number one in the nation! When winter arrives, Allyn and I take turns making soup for dinner. I made soup over the weekend. Allyn made soup the other night.

When the leaves are gone, nests are revealed; birds, squirrels, and bees. Temps in the 50's today, but looks like it's going to be colder for the foreseeable future. Flannel sheets on the bed.

Leaning against a tree,
leaves and branches are few:
A night of stars.
Shiki
Zen page-a-day calendar

season of berries

howls

from somewhere on flickr years ago

On Friday night the town of Ira held the annual tree-lighting ceremony. Allyn asked me to lead the Christmas carol singing part of the program. I was asked to go outside and prepare for that. The moon was almost full. While I was waiting I heard the sound of coyotes, quite a few of them, howling at the moon. That sound is riveting when you're out alone in the dark. It was amazing how quickly I went from the usual daydreaming to being grounded in the present moment; in the cold, in the dark, in the coyotes and their howls.

Listen. Make a way

for yourself inside 

yourself. Stop looking in

the other way of looking.

Rumi

Zen page-a-day calendar

dawn

Each time the dawn appears, the mystery is there in its entirety.
Rene Daumal
Zen page-a-day calendar

November

trailing arbutus

Arthur Haines Go Botany

As I said, November is the month of the axe, and, as in other love affairs, there is skill in the exercise of bias...

I find it disconcerting to analyze, ex post facto, the reasons behind my own axe-in-hand decisions. I find, first of all, that not all trees are created free and equal. Where a white pine and a red birch are crowding each other, I have a priori bias; I always cut the birch to favor the pine. Why?

...So I try again and here perhaps is something, under this pine will ultimately grow a trailing arbutus, an Indian pipe, a pyrola, or a twin flower, whereas under the birch a bottle gentian is about the best to be hoped for. In this pine a pileated woodpecker will ultimately chisel out a nest; in the birch a hairy will have to suffice. In this pine the wind will sing for me in April, at which time the birch is only rattling naked twigs. These possible reasons for my bias carry weight, but why? Does the pine stimulate my imagination and my hopes more deeply than the birch does? If so, is the difference in the trees, or in me?

November

A Sand County Almanac

Aldo Leopold

blazing

Fifteen degrees this morning, stars blazing outside. Wool caps have come out of the bureau. Christmas wreaths on sale at supermarkets. Allyn brought home a couple of poinsettias yesterday.

That which cannot change, remains. The great peace, the deep silence, the hidden beauty of reality remain.While it cannot be conveyed through words, it is waiting for you to experience for yourself.
Nisargadatta Mahaaraj
Zen page-a-day calendar

tamaracks

I must not drive much through tamarack country these days as I haven't seen any turning until we drove the NY thruway to Buffalo for Thanksgiving. They are one of the last to turn, maybe the willows are the last. The asparagus plants in the back provide a miniature version in color and shape.

Gratitude

November is the gloomiest month of the year in Vermont; dark, cold, wet. It contrasts so nicely during Thanksgiving when cozy homes are full of warmth, family, light, lunacy, and love.

Happy Thanksgiving!

At times our own light goes out, and is rekindled by a spark from another person.

Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

Albert Schweitzer

gunmetal blue

Snow on the mountains. Clank of a radiator at morning sitting. Saw a woman shoveling a shrunken jack-o-lantern off her front walk yesterday (me, too). Green Mountains transformed to gunmetal blue.

The moon shining full.
Smoke drifting away
over water.
Ranetsu
Zen page-a-day calendar

shopping

Windy and cold. Did the grocery shopping on Saturday. Parking lot was packed. Cranberries in abundance. Cans of cream of mushroom soup stacked on corners. Hood's Golden Egg Nog is now available. Wish I could get some to you, Pip! Stopped by the winter farmer's market, not that I needed anything there. It was packed as well. For some reason, the winter farmer's market is a comforting place to visit. It's so full of life.

It's not autumn's cold that keeps me awake,
but what I feel before the grasses and trees in my courtyard.
My banana tree has lost its leaves;
my parasol tree is old;
and night after night, the sound of wind,
the sound of rain.

Chujo Joshin
Zen page-a-day calendar

bonus

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swUlDc3v3DE

blackbird

from somewhere on flickr

Large flocks of blackbirds when I was out in the woods putting up No Hunting signs last week. I couldn't see them, but could hear them. This entry first appeared on this blog on 11/6/09.

Cloudy. At this time of year you see large flocks of blackbirds gathering (or starlings or grackles), 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. Its 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 have 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's 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

Believe it or not, there are still some trees that are turning, and they will be chronicled at a later date, but, for the most part, the fall foliage season is over. The season between the turning of the leaves and the arrival of snow is known at "stick season." There is a stark beauty and clarity that describes this time of year. There is kind of an opening up of forests and fields as the leaves come down, and the corn is turned to silage. Birds such as the blue jays are much more noticeable. They've always been there during the summer months, but there have been so many other birds to notice that they sort of get lost.

Among the corn stalks
wind rippling
just for the corn.

Soen Nakagawa
Zen page-a-day calendar

silver

This time of year the water in lakes, ponds and streams takes on a metallic quality, like molten silver. Does that have something to do with the fading light, the browns and grays of the mountains? I don't know. When the snow arrives, water often looks profoundly black, like the eye of a shark.

The earth and heaven utter no word, but
they ceaselessly repeat
the holy book unwritten.

Kaiten Nukariya
Zen page-a-day calendar

snow

I was outside working yesterday when it started to snow very lightly. Drove home from Shelburne through this very light snow. It decorated the trees and bushes along the roadside with white highlights, like powdered sugar. It was beautiful, the first snowfall always is.
I ran into one of my neighbors at the supermarket. He was genuinely crestfallen about the start of the long, cold winter season. I tried to tell him how beautiful it was, how even in March when we're all sick of winter, it is still beautiful. He wasn't convinced.

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

woods

Tomorrow is the firs day of rifle season. Out in the woods yesterday putting up No Hunting signs. It's beautiful out there.

It's beautiful out in the woods.

I can feel this heart inside me, and I conclude it exists. I can touch this world, and I also conclude it exists. All my knowledge ends at this point. The rest is hypothesis.

Albert Camus

Zen page-a-day calendar

attic

It's amazing how much the changes in the seasons is reflected in the activity in our attic. Patio furniture goes up in the attic, wood rack and wood stove equipment comes down. Summer clothes go up in the attic, winter clothes come down. Smell of wood smoke.

stars

Up very early this morning, couldn't sleep. Looked out the window, and it was clear, the stars were out. Took a walk in the morning chill. Sirius chasing the waning moon and the constellation Orion across the heavens. The planet Venus blazing in the east over the Green Mountains.

If you despair the shortening of the days and the long nights, take up astronomy. There are miracles to be seen out there, with a telescope or without.

There is no reality in the absence of observation.

The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

Zen page-a-day calendar

over the moon

About a week ago, the farmers came to take the cows home for the winter. We had nine cows this year. Seven went in a docile and cooperative way. Two cows decided they didn't want to go, and ran away. One of the cows is accurately named Double Trouble. The other one is apparently related to the cow that jumped over the moon. The existing fencing wasn't tall enough to hold him.
The grass has been getting sparse for weeks now, and the water hose was getting clogged up with leaves. It was time for them to go home. On Saturday the cows were seen by the guy who taps our maple trees up in the high pasture. They're definitely not supposed to be up there. There was plenty of grass, however, and apples to boot. He closed one of the gates to keep them from heading into the woods from there. I went up there on Sunday to see if I could get them to come down. They were nowhere to be seen. I opened the gate that had been closed the day before in case they had somehow found their way into the woods, and were trying to get back into the pasture.
I didn't sleep well that night imagining that they might end up in the road and cause a serious automobile accident, or get into a neighbor's garden or some such thing. On Sunday the farmers came back to try to round them up. He found them in a nearby pasture. He offered them some grain, and they slowly came down the mountain. They had purchased some taller fencing, and were able to coax them into a makeshift corral. Once they were enclosed, and realized that the game was up, they quietly went into the trailer for the ride home.
As they were heading out the lane, I heaved a sigh of relief. I realized how much they are on my mind over the summer season. I count them every time they go by in the back to make sure they're all accounted for. I check the water periodically to make sure they don't die of thirst. I worry about them. I realized that at the same time I'm also concerned for the welfare of the bluebirds that have nested in the back for years now. I hope they don't tangle with the sparrows or get eaten by raccoons.
At first I thought it was a sign of the summer season, the concern for animals, but realized it's ongoing. The deer hunting season starts on Saturday. It's the worst time of the year as far as I'm concerned. I've been putting up No Hunting signs as I do every year. In the spring I worry about a late frost, and how that could damage the apple harvest, and how a bad year could cause havoc with the deer herd. I worry about heavy snows and coyotes.
What I realized is when you have land you have animals. They are an intimate part of your neighborhood, and it's a two edged sword, at least for me. I love having them around, but I worry about them as well.

bronze

The season of the scarlet maple leaves is over for another year. Gone with the wind. Phase two of the foliage season has started. Taking center stage are the beech and oak trees. The beeches favor burnt orange. The oaks are more like bronze, the color of an indian head penny.

clouds of milkweed

Rows and flows of angel hair

And ice cream castles in the air

And feathered canyons everywhere

I've looked at clouds that way.

But now they only block the sun

They rain and snow on everyone

So many things I would have done

But clouds got in my way

I've looked at clouds from both sides now

From up and down and still somehow

It's clouds illusions I recall

I really don't know clouds at all

Both Sides Now

Joni Mitchell

the leaves were flying

It's been very windy this week. The following first appeared in this blog 11/18/11.

Clear and cold. Two weeks ago on 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 they came toward me, slowly fluttering in the air. They would start to head down, but would catch a 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, and 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. I parted ways with the zephyr along the fence line, and slowly fell to the earth, landing in Allyn's flower garden near the old apple tree. As my eyes finally parted from the oak leaf, I look up and saw the waxing moon, 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

Happy Halloween!

Screech owls moan in the yellowing
Mulberry trees. Field mice scurry,
Preparing their holes for winter.
Midnight we cross an old battlefield.
The moonlight shines cold on white bones.

Tu Fu
Zen page-a-day calendar

nor'easter

Nor'easter blew through the area last night. Utility trucks and blinking lights on the roads this morning. Two good friends are driving to Florida today for the winter. We probably won't see them again until May. There are many autumnal transitions which are taking place, and this is one that has escaped my attention as blog-worthy material until this morning. We will miss them.

Red lanterns

Red lanterns have lighted my way on many a pleasant hunt in many a region, but I think that blackberries must first have learned how to glow in the sand counties of central Wisconsin. Along the little boggy streams of these friendly wastes, called poor by those whose own lights barely flicker, the blackberries burn richly red on every sunny day from first frost to the last day of the season. Every woodcock and every partridge has his own private solarium under these briars...
At sunset on the last day of the grouse season, every blackberry blows out his light. I do not understand how a mere bush can thus be infallibly informed about the Wisconsin statutes, nor have I ever gone back the next day to find out. For the ensuing eleven months the lanterns glow only in recollection.

October
A Sand County Almanac
Aldo Leopold

stubble

Signs for the Pittsford Haunted House and Corn Maze on Route 7. Wood's all stacked and ready for winter. Like everything else, corn is turning from green to brown. It is also turning into silage as fields are reduced to stubble.

So lonely
I leave the hut
and gaze out-
the leaves of rice plants
bending like waves in autumn wind
Ryokan
Zen page-a day calendar

leaves

It's been a very interesting fall foliage season. The historical peak of the season is on Columbus Day which this year was on October 9th. The foliage wasn't even close to peak at that time. It was at least a week later. Was that due to a warm and sunny October or the long term effects of global warming, probably a little of both.
Both Allyn and I noticed that many of the leaves weren't turning this year, they were just drying up, and falling off the trees. This happened early in the process and was certainly due to the very dry conditions. Our conclusion was that it was going to be a bad year for the leaf peepers. But driving around here recently you see that the turning leaves are beautiful. We've had a string of beautiful foliage years, and this would certainly have to count among them.
We're probably a little past peak right now, but there's still plenty of beautiful viewing in store. The leaves by now have thinned out on many of the trees and there's a beautiful contrast between the leaves and the dark branches underneath.

Leaves will start to drop from the tops while some remain on the bottoms of the trees. Sometimes these are among the most beautiful.

I've written a lot about this season of seasons here in Vermont, and I plan to be writing more. I feel privileged to witness this wonderful transformation year after year.

plague

Still lots of beautiful leaves out there. Season of vines. You see them climbing up many supporting cables on telephone poles. Silage trucks active on Rte. 7. It spills over the tops of the trucks onto the road and the cars behind. Seems like a plague of green locusts coming out of hiding. Woods Market closed for the season.

beautiful day

4:30 Meditation
6:30 Breakfast, sliver of moon and planet Venus peeking through the dining room window.
7:00 Out the door, sun coming up over Camel's Hump.
It's a beautiful day.

hard frost

Got home last night, and the stars were shining. It was a very clear night as evidenced by the fact that I was able to see the Andromeda Galaxy unaided. That always seems like a miracle to me.
A clear night usually means one thing this time of year, a frost. Sure enough we had a hard one last night. Many of the observed changes in the natural world are gradual and subtle. Not so the first hard frost of the year. Had to scramble to dig the scraper out of the back of the car and get busy on the windshield in the dark before heading to meditation this morning. I'm afraid that the basil, parsley, and tomatoes which have been merrily growing around the house for months now are done for. They may be gone for good, and I'm gone for a week.

leaves and needles

Fallen leaves floating down the Ira Creek. They end up covering the bottom of the brook this time of year. Sometimes they clog up the hose that provides water to the cows in the pasture. Pine needles turning color and coming off the trees in a manner similar to the deciduous trees.

After the leaves fall
in the village at the foot
of Ogura Peak,
one can see through the
tree branches
the moon shining in
the clear.
Saigyo
Zen page-a-day calendar

essence of wildness

Yesterday I looked up and saw 4-5 very large flocks of geese heading south for the winter. I don't know how many there were, 100-200. Everything stopped. Their calls are the essence of wildness. When one experiences a moment like this, the feeling is like you're being filled up with helium.
It's easy to despair over the state of this weary world at present. But the skies are filled with wonder and beauty and I'm grateful for that.

Wild Geese

Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about your despair yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

foliage

Let's face it, the part of Vermont that I live in is a backwater. There's just not a lot that is happening that is on the forefront of world attention. There are a couple of areas, however, in which little old Vermont is world famous. When people think of maple syrup, they think of Vermont. When they think of fall foliage, Vermont is at the top of the list.
Yesterday was Columbus Day which is usually considered the peak of the foliage season. I had occasion to go down to Manchester, Vermont. It was packed with tourists. I walked by one family that was speaking Chinese I think. Even though it has not been a banner year for color, and even though the peak seems to be some days away this year, the colors are still beautiful. Sometimes it is easy to take for granted that people literally come from thousands of miles away just to see what is right out your own back door.