magnolias

Magnolia blossoms in the spring.

These are the seeds that the blossoms turn into in the fall. Beautiful either way.

colder

A lot has happened in a week. It's gotten a lot colder, temps. in the 20's at night. Basil in Allyn's front garden is done for. Moved the patio furniture up in the attic, wood rack back in the kitchen. Ice scraper from the back seat to the front seat. Leaves are gone from the maples. Snow on the tops of the mountains.

gone for a week

October 18, 1973

I am up before the sun, and make a fire. The water boils as the sun ignites the peaks, and we breakfast in sunshine on hot tea and porridge. A nutcracker is rasping in the pines, and soon the crows come, down the morning valley; cawing, they hide among long shimmering needles then glide in, bold, to walk about in the warming scent of resin, dry feet scratching on the bark of fallen trees.

Since Jang-bu cannot reach Tarakot before the evening, we have time. I walk barefoot in the grass, spreading my gear with ceremony: today, for the first time in weeks, everything will dry, a great event in expedition life. Then with my stave I prop my pack upright and sit back against the mountainside, my face in cold shade and hot sun on my arms and belly.

Pine needles dance in a light breeze against the three white sister peaks to the northwest. I sit in silence, lost in the burning hum of mountain bees. An emerald butterfly comes to my knee to dry its wings, gold wings with black specks above, white polka dots beneath. Through the frozen atmosphere, the sun is burning.

In the clearness of this Himalayan air,  mountains draw near, and in such splendor, tears come quietly to my eyes and cool on my sunburnt cheeks. This is not mere soft-mindedness, nor am I all that silly with the altitude. My head has cleared in these weeks free of intrusions--mail, telephones, people and their needs--and I respond to things spontaneously, without defensive or self-conscious screens. Still, all this feeling is astonishing: not so long ago I could say truthfully that I had not shed a tear in twenty years.

The Snow Leopard
Peter Matthiessen

stubble

Wasn't too long ago that the corn was green and very tall in fields all over the state. Summer has turned to fall, and corn has turned to silage; corn stalks to stubble.

a day in the life

The Vermont Zen Center version of "ango," an intensification of practice, has started. Yesterday I worked at the Center, putting up No Hunting signs and mowing the lawn. At some point I heard the screeching of hawks high overhead. Four or five raptors were circling the grounds, that was a first. I figured this might be a part of the raptor migration and headed to Mt. Philo for lunch, and observing. On the way I saw another 10-20 hawks and eagles in the sky over Shelburne, think I saw a bald eagle! I thought I was really going to be in for a treat. When I got to Mt. Philo, however, whatever had been going on had petered out and died. It's all a great mystery to me.
We had our weekly meeting at the Center, getting out about 8:30. I went into town to get an evening snack. The stars were out. I had brought my binoculars along, hoping to get a closer look at some raptors. Got a good look at Mars, the Andromeda Galaxy, and the Double Cluster in Cassiopeia before bedding down for the night.
Dokusan (one-on-one meeting with the teacher) started at 6 AM. I got up at 5 to pack up the car as I had to leave early for a United Way meeting in Rutland. The sky was still clear. Hauled out the binoculars and got a good look at the Pleiades and the constellation Orion; Sirius blazing in the south. The drive home was beautiful. The sun was rising over the Green Mountains, peaking through clouds of yellow and gold. The maples glowed through the morning mist in the colors of autumn. There was a man taking a walk when I passed through Middlebury armed with a camera, and the joy of being in the right place at the right time. When I was just to the north of Brandon, the migrating geese began to rise out of the neighboring swamps, ponds, and rivers. As they rose, they began to organize their journey in ever-changing kaleidoscopic patterns; a blob becoming a circle becoming a line, becoming a V. There were over a hundred of them. There really aren't words to adequately describe the feeling that came out of witnessing that spectacle.
The United Way meeting started at 8. The day has just begun. I feel like a pretty lucky guy.

In his first summers, forsaking all his toys, my son would stand rapt for near an hour in his sandbox in the orchard as doves and redwings came and went on the warm wind, the leaves dancing, the clouds flying, birdsong and the sweet smell of privet and rose. The child was not observing; he was at rest in the very center of the universe, a part of things, unaware of endings and beginnings, still in unison with the primordial nature of creation, letting all light and phenomena pour through.

The Snow Leopard
Peter Matthiessen

Columbus Day

Columbus Day, Erin's favorite holiday/not. This is traditionally considered the peak of the foliage season. With the advent of global warming, however, it now occurs later in the year. It's been a strange season so far. Many of the trees are unusually green, but some of the maples are already past peak.
Fall foliage is one of nature's great mysteries. In some years the colors are vivid. On misty mornings the brightest colors seem to give off their own light. Some years the colors are dull. No one really knows why. This year it actually seems something of a mix. Trees in the back are muted, but I've seen some really beautiful ones.
I think it was last Columbus Day that I was down in Manchester doing some soliciting for the Hunger Banquet at the VZC. I walked past a couple speaking a language from the Orient; maybe Japanese or Chinese. People come from all over the world to bear witness to the beauty we see every year right in our own back yards.

At dusk, white egrets flapped across the sunken clouds, now black with rain; on earth, the dark had come. Then, four miles above those mud streets of the lowlands, at a point so high as to seem overhead, a luminous whiteness shown-- the light of snows. Glaciers loomed and vanished in the grays, and the sky parted, and the snow cone of Machhapuchare glistened like a spire of a higher kingdom.

The Snow Leopard
Peter Matthiessen

vivid

The Green Mountains are multicolored this time of year. Gray on top of orange on top of green as leaves turn and then fall off the trees all depending on the elevation. The vivid colors of autumn slowly unwrapping themselves.

Listen...
With faint dry sound
Like steps of passing ghosts,
The leaves, frost crisp'd, break free from the trees
And fall.
Adelaide Crapsy

autumn

October has arrived and the fall foliage season has finally started. It's been warmer than normal. We have yet to have a frost, and there isn't one on the horizon. Some of the earliest leaves to turn, and some of the most beautiful are those on trees in swamps and wet areas. Leaves on vines seem to turn sooner than leaves on trees, and are also very beautiful.

Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
Albert Camus

bonus

common vetch

A bonus from the hike on Snake Mountain, saw two wildflowers I'd never seen before. That doesn't happen much any more.

blue-stemmed goldenrod

birds

Outside on a cloudy Friday evening, heard the urgent call of geese heading south, the essence of wildness, even though I couldn't see them. Woke up on a sunny Saturday morning, wind from the northwest. Outside, two hawks circling and screeching in the blue skies overhead. Allyn and I hiked Snake Mountain, and I was hoping to see some raptors heading south. The conditions were favorable.
It was a great hike with an amazing view from the top of the Valley of Vermont, Lake Champlain, and the Adirondacks in the west. Unfortunately, didn't see much in the way of raptors--just one, and it actually seemed to be heading the wrong way. Saw the first flock of geese heading south, however. North winds expected on Wednesday. I'm going to keep looking.

"Audubon" Frederick says, "was an American, walked into swamps and woods for years, back when that whole country was just swamps and woods. He'd spend all day watching one individual bird. Then he'd shoot it and prop it up with wires and sticks and paint it. Probably knew more than any birder before or since. He'd eat most of the birds after he painted them. Can you imagine?" Frederick's voice trembles with ardency. Gazing up. "Those bright mists and your gun on your shoulders, and your eyes set firmly in your head?"

Werner tries to see what Frederick sees: a time before photography, before binoculars. And here was someone willing to tramp out into a wilderness brimming with the unknown and bring back paintings. A book not so much full of birds as full of evanescence, of blue-winged trumpeting mysteries.

All the Light We Cannot See
Anthony Doerr