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