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