Tag: trees

To Wander Slowly

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photo by Emily Gibson (Dark Hedges, Ireland)
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photo by Joel DeWaard (Whatcom County, Washington)

 

For how many years did I wander slowly
through the forest. What wonder and
glory I would have missed had I ever been
in a hurry!
~Mary Oliver from “Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way” from Felicity

 

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photo by Emily Gibson (Mt. Stewart Gardens, Ireland)
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photo by Ben Gibson (New Hampshire)

God is at home, it’s we who have gone out for a walk.
~Meister Eckhart

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photo by Emily Gibson (Ireland)
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photo by Emily Gibson (Scotland)

Sometimes going for a walk is too much like a sprint, as far and as fast as possible.
Sometimes it is a spontaneous trek into the unknown, just to prove it can be done.
Sometimes it is a climb into the dark, with precipices and crumbling ledges under our feet.
Sometimes it is simply a journey of curiosity to see what may be around the corner.

No matter why or where or how far we wander,
or how slowly,
the path home shines just bright enough
to show us the way back to His glory
when we are ready.
He is there, waiting.
He keeps the light on for us.

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photo by Emily Gibson (Vancouver Island)

Diffuse Light of a Foggy Sky

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And then in the falling comes a rising,
as of the bass coming up for autumn’s last insects
struggling amid the mosaic of leaves on the lake’s surface.
We express it as the season of lacking, but what is this nakedness
— the unharvested corn frost-shriveled but still a little golden
under the diffuse light of a foggy sky,
the pin oak’s newly stark web of barbs, the woodbine’s vines
shriven of their scarlet and left askew in the air
like the tangle of threads on the wall’s side
of the castle tapestry—what is it but greater intimacy,
the world slackening its grip on the veils, letting them slump
to the floor in a heap of sodden colors, and saying,
this is me, this is my skeletal muscle,
my latticework of bones, my barren winter skin,
this is it and if you love me, know that this is what you love.
~Laura Fargas “October Struck” from Animal of the Sixth Day

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Something about the emerging nakedness of autumn reassures that we can be loved even when stripped down to our bones. We do make quite a show of shedding our coverings, our bits and pieces fluttering down to rejoin the soil, but what is left is meager lattice.

But when the light is just right, we are golden, illuminated and illuminating, even if barely there.

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Cares Drop Away

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The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of autumn.
—John Muir

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The Pacific Northwest has been anticipating a “historic” windstorm for the past four days, comparable to the west coast “Columbus Day” storm of 1962.  I remember that storm vividly as an eight year old in Olympia, as the wind gusts were clocked at over 140 mph.  Large fir trees toppled over like toothpicks in the woods all around our house.  The root balls stood 15 feet tall, headstones over a mass of tree graves.  We lived without power for at least a week, losing all our stored food in our freezer and depending on canned goods, a camp stove and kerosene lights and hot dogs roasted over our fireplace.

When the predictions came for a similar strength storm last week, like millions of others in the region, I dutifully prepared by storing up water, getting a battery operated radio ready and counting up my canned goods.  We waited, en masse, for the monster to storm into our yards.

The lights flickered a few times, but the winds were meager in comparison to our usual storms.

Some people were disappointed, having geared up for “the big one.”

I’m among the relieved this morning,  having aged past the desire for an adventure without power, and today my cares have dropped away like the leaves that let go to settle silent for the winter.

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Sun and Wind Muscle

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There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind.
~Annie Dillard

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I tend to think of the wind, not the sun, having all the weather muscle, especially in the midst of a brisk northeaster blow in the dead of winter, far outperforming the meager and anemic sunlight.  Memories of northeast blizzard muscle are still fresh in my mind, even in the first half of August.

But earlier this week, on a warm summer day,  it was both sun and wind competing with their mustered energy.  With all the house windows kept wide open to keep things cool there were frequent door-slamming, blinds-beating, leaf-loosening, windchime-clattering, hay-drying gusts.  Muscle was all around and through us.

There was enough sun to create a shadow tree blending like a holograph projected onto the woods.  There was enough wind to shake the grasses and thistles and scatter their seed.  There was enough sun to dip the evening with orange smoothie and enough wind to clear the haze from the air.

For now there is plenty of energy to spare: spirit-filled muscle to pick me up, bend me over, warm my heart, all bottled and ready to release on that inevitable wintry day that will come,  sooner than I want.

shadow of the lone fir cast upon the woods at sunset

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Peace Blooms

barnstormingblog3 Comments

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When great trees fall
in forests,
small things recoil into silence,
their senses
eroded beyond fear.

Great souls die and
our reality, bound to
them, takes leave of us.
Our souls,
dependent upon their
nurture,
now shrink, wizened.

And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly…

Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.
~Maya Angelou from “When Great Trees Fall”

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When I need to be restored,
humbled and forgiven,
I walk back to the woods
to stand before the great beings
cut down in their prime
over one hundred years ago,
their scarred stumps still bearing the notches
from the lumbermen’s springboards.

Old growth firs and cedars
became mere headstones
in the graveyard left behind.

They existed, they existed,
their grandeur leaves no doubt.
I leave the woods and come back
to the world better
because they existed.

 

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Propping up the Darkness

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Sometimes on summer evenings I step
Out of my house to look at trees
Propping darkness up to the silence.
~Paul Zimmer from “A Final Affection”

 

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We spent 16 hours yesterday on a ferry going up the inside passage on the British Columbia coastal islands, witnessing whale spouts and splashes.  The backdrop consisted of millions of trees in pristine wilderness propping up the sky, the clouds, and the silence we disturbed.

Anywhere I go, I look to the trees and feel immediately among old friends.

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An Apology to the Forest

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I’ve been writing almost daily for over ten years.  I started after 9/11/01 to try to make sense of a world that seemed beyond understanding.  Wrestling with the uncertainty of not knowing what each day may bring, I began with what I saw happening in our own back yard, in the barn and woods, in my family and in my work. Then I tapped into my memory and personal history, and the words just kept flowing.

All this has grown to over 1500 separate essays, poems and stories accompanied by backyard photographs. This is a whole lot of word harvesting, most of which exists in pixels and gigabytes, not printed on paper so no apologies are necessary to our local forests.

A few pieces have been published in really lovely publications that people actually receive in the mail, to hold in their hands while they are sitting on the toilet, or in the bath tub, or it falls onto their tummies while they are doze off at night.  I know these magazines are read in doctor and dentist waiting rooms while people sit nervously waiting for a diagnosis or a painful procedure, or they are feeling so miserable, all they can do is look at pretty pictures with encouraging words.

I have had a few appreciative letters from readers reach me, addressed with only my name and the small town where I live in Washington state, with no zip code.  Based on these communications, I estimate the average age of my readership to be approximately 85 years old.  While that doesn’t bode well for the longevity of my potential audience, I at least know there is a growing cohort of octogenarians anticipated in the next 30+ years, myself included, so maybe there is still hope.

What to do in a day and age of electronic books, self publishing and blogging?   This collection of words and photos does not have a plot line and consistent characters, no rising action, no climax, denouement and I hope, no “The End” anytime soon. I wish at times I could hold it in my hands with an actual binding and book jacket because someone else other than me decided it was worth taking a chance to publish. When a publisher actually asked me to send what I have in a significantly more organized form, I laid awake at night in a sweat trying to think up clever, pithy, “you can’t put it down” titles.  No longer can I blame menopause for my insomnia — instead it is the overwhelming anxiety of any writer:  the magazine article goes into the recycle bin or ends up lining the kitty litter box or bird cage, or the unsold books wind up on the remainder discount table completely unwanted and unnecessary to the well being of civilization.

It all comes down to this: what book dream can possibly be worth the life of a tree?

 

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Between Midnight and Dawn: The One Who Waits For Us

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As the rain and the snow
    come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
    without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
    so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
    It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
    and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
12 You will go out in joy
    and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
    will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
    will clap their hands.
Isaiah 55:10-12

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And when music comes to us
With its heavenly beauty
It brings us desolation
For when we hear it
We half remember
That lost native country

We dimly remember the fields
Their fragrant windswept clover
The birdsongs in the orchards
The wild white violets in the moss
By the transparent streams

And shining at the heart of it
Is the longed-for beauty
Of the One who waits for us
Who will always wait for us
In those radiant meadows

Yet also came to live with us
And wanders where we wander.
~Anne Porter from “Music”

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as these wind-tossed days blow out
our lights and our heat,
as storms of life
take our energy and leave us limp,
out fitful sleep becomes refuge
instead of restoration

to wander this blustery path
alongside the One who
readies us for the coming radiance
of meadow blooms,
of bird song
and sleigh bell frog chorus
and trees clap their hands

this is a timely remembrance
of His promises kept~
this is not all there is

 

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During this Lenten season, I will be drawing inspiration from the new devotional collection edited by Sarah Arthur —Between Midnight and Dawn

Best of Barnstorming Photos — Summer/Autumn 2015

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In the hope that 2016 will be filled with daily opportunities for a slow walk through moments of serene beauty~
blessings to you all from Barnstorming!

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For more “Best of Barnstorming” photos:

Winter/Spring 2015

Summer/Fall 2014

Best of 2013

Seasons on the Farm:

BriarCroft in Summer, in Autumn, in Winter,
at Year’s End

Bones of the Landscape

barnstormingblog3 Comments

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I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape — the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.
~Andrew Wyeth, artist

How endlessly beautiful is woodland in winter!  Today there is a thin mist; just enough to make a background of tender blue mystery three hundred yards away, and to show any defect in the grouping of the near trees.
~ Gertrude Jekyll, British horticulturalist

There is a stumbling reluctance transitioning from a month of advent expectancy to three months of winter dormancy.  Inevitably there is let-down: the watching and waiting is not over after all.  There is profound loneliness knowing the story continues, hidden from view.

We have been stripped naked as the bare trees right now; our bones, like the trees of the landscape, raising up broken branches and healed fractures of previous winter windstorms.  We no longer have anything to hide behind or among,  our defects are plain to see,  our whole story a mystery as yet untold but impossible to conceal.

Here I am, abundantly flawed with pocks and scars, yet renewed once again.  There are hints of new growth to come when the frost abates and the sap thaws.   I am  prepared to wait an eternity if necessary, for the rest of the story.

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