silvery

 Cold and sunny days. Silvery drops of snow melt falling from the roof. Speaking of silver, the water in streams and ponds takes on a metallic, silvery sheen this time of year. I don't know why. It might have something to do with the colors in the surrounding foliage.

Later in the year, when snow covers the ground, the color of the water becomes black in small streams, like the eye of a shark.

the real world

 Back in the world, the real world. Walking on a snowy and windy day. Sticks and branches down along dirt roads. Sound of the snowplow for the first time this year. Wind roaring through the trees, flapping the flag in the front yard, ringing the wind chimes on a neighbor's front porch. Snow stinging cheeks, nose and eyes.

Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Page a day calendar on gratitude

Freedom!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3onnJuBS18

 

gettyimages

Tolling for the searching ones on their speechless seeking trail

For the lonesome-hearted lovers with too personal a tale

And for each unharmful, gentle soul misplaced inside a jail

And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Chimes of Freedom

Bob Dylan

snow

 Nothing changes the landscape as much as the first snowfall of the year.

animacy

I come here to listen, to nestle in the curve of the roots in a soft hollow of pine needles, to lean my bones against the column of white pine, to turn off the voice in my head until I hear the voices outside it: the shhh of wind in needles, water trickling over rock, nuthatch tapping, chipmunks digging, beechnut falling, mosquito in my ear, and something more--something that is not me, for which we have no language, the wordless being of others in which we are never alone. After the drumbeat of my mother's heart, this was my first language.

 

Learning the language of animacy

Braiding Sweetgrass

Robin Wall Kimmerer

California dreamin'

 All the leaves are brown

And the sky is gray...

why?

 We're still walking, but not so much of a morning walk, at least for me, anymore. It's too cold, wearing a wool cap and vowed to bring gloves when I go out today. Steady tap, tap, tap of rainwater on the leaves that remain above the Crossroads. Most of the leaves are gone by now. What remains is interesting to me.

Very young and small trees keep their leaves a little bit longer than the full grown variety. I wonder why that is? Is it because they are just so close to the ground that the sap from trees has less of a distance to go to get to the roots where it is stored during the winter? The spring ephemerals (wildflowers) appear very early because it's the only time that sunlight appears on the forest floor. Do small trees hold on to their leaves just a little bit longer in order to take advantage of a little bit of extra sunlight, now that the larger trees have lost their leaves? I don't know.

Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

Stephen Hawking