I had the honor of taking Jakobi’s Senior picture this week. You can see more on her Instagram, link in the sidebar.
Autumnal Colors
Peak foilage is happening right now in our neck of the woods here in Vermont.
The floods of ’23 and ’24 drained a nearby pond exposing this beaver house entranceway!
Fungal Wonders!
On Friday i went out to the Zenbarn for the first time in a long while and got down to the soulful bluegrass sounds of the Wormdogs
Relaxing by the outdoor fire at the Zenbarn
U-32 Cross Country Invitational
Full Moon Ecstatic Dance
Full Moon was on Saturday and I went up to Fern’s Dreamland to dance under the lunar light within the circle of stones placed by Ivan who died 10 years ago this week. Miss that guy!
Full Moon from our meadow
From the Girdwood Avalanche Archives
Shopping Cart Stream
If you drive west on Dimond Blvd. far enough, you leave the urban development behind. The traffic will thin, then disappear completely and you will find yourself on a two-lane country road. Quite a contrast and only a few miles from the Seward/Dimond intersection. Rolling hills covered with birch white trees. The autumn sun low in the west spreading a deep red blanket of light amongst the trees. Soon you are at Kincaid Park where you can hike out along the high bluff approaching the mouth of the arm.It is a good spot for an autumn sunset walk. Dead grasses and leafless cottonwood, the ossified shape of the cow parsnip. This long Alaskan autumn is more than a statistical anomaly; it is the ever-changing face of Nature, a mystery to be savored. The white race names the mystery God while indigenous people are content to leave it as it is—a mystery. Not knowing the answer to something is not a source of shame, but, rather, humbleness before the unknown: a neglected aspect of our humanity. Out here on the bluff, the sky is big and the eyes see a long way to the southwest along the Kenai Mountains. Looking east behind me, I see the large coastal plain that Anchorage sits upon as it rises to meet the Chugach Mountains.
If you drive Dimond east, you leave the sprawl sooner and begin the slow climb up through the land of the golden sunset windows. Each home here on the mountain flank an island among alder, cow parsnip, and mountain grass. The occasional lawn shows how far removed the homeowner is from the natural biome they inhabit. The home looks like something plucked from the TV screen and placed on the hillside. Past these houses, the road ends in a trailhead and I can hike in sunset shadows among the “foliageless” fall awaiting its winter blanket. Color that is still on the ground in the tundra flora and the grass grabs at the blinding sunlight, low in the southwest, and amplifies it. The coastal plain is now spread out below me. How many rivers from how many mountain ranges drain into the sea here? The plain is a massive delta of glacial silt deposited over the millennia. Laid below is Alaska’s largest city. What is so majestic about this vista of Anchorage is that the urban area appears dwarfed and cradled within the Nature—although, when stuck at the intersection of Benson and C Street, the view could be one of a 100 thousand intersections across the U.S. From this vantage point, there are mountains and sky and water as far as the eye can see. It is a sight, a visual metaphor that makes it strikingly apparent that we are not separate from nature. We are held in her embrace like a mother holding her child to her breast. Not only are we nourished by her, we are the eyes that she may see, the ears she may hear, the hands with which she grasps, and the mind with which she ponders, conceptualizes and gives shape to her evolving form.
Last autumn, I was in Ohio and, in the urban/rural sprawl where the Big Bear Supermart has supplanted the black bear, I sought out some undeveloped land and found a wooded acre with a stream running through hemmed in by roads and neighborhoods. Sitting by a shopping cart half submerged in the stream I imagined an acre, surrounded not by urban shopping mart sprawl but by millions of acre of woods and prairie as was Ohio 200 years ago. Ho! What a sight that is and the nearby rush that is the road disappears as I soar up through the trees to marvel at the gently rolling land, to maybe spy a herd of bison upon the sea of grass, as was not uncommon in 18th Century Ohio. A noise in the brush brings me quickly back to the shopping cart stream. I turn perhaps a bit scornful as I seek the person who interrupts me from my reverie. The noise again downstream. I turn and watch as a deer emerges and sips from the water. A deer. Expecting a person, I am humbled in the presence of Spirit and a revelation comes to me: the deer, their nature intact, live still as they have for how many hundreds of winters? It is our Nature which is not intact or even conscious. Rather than flow with nature, we destroy it and alienate ourselves within controlled environments. How different the life of humanity the last 200 years compared with the life of the deer. From their perspective, we have covered the earth with ribbons and fields of rock, put up lots of lodges and enclosed ourselves in metallic exo-skeletons which occasionally kill them as they cross the rock ribbons. This deer had shown me vividly not just the separation of mind and body, but the domination of the body over the mind. The biological imperative is to reproduce and grow and, as a culture, that is what we do. Politicians of all kinds champion the biological imperative. Our social problems are not biological ones, they are emotional and mental. We must free our minds from the biological imperative and work from the emotional and spiritual natures of our being which are self evident within the natural rhythms and the flow of seasons.
Snow’s first small blanket lies on the ground. A long autumn’s lingering light dwindling first coloring the foliage than stripping it of its covering. Open lays the earth as we walked upon her and the rain washes over us. At the falls, the surge of autumn’s water has pooled the stream beneath twice and gives form to a new broad drop. Shallow enough, now I can wade over the riverrocks, step up the slippery logs and visit the grotto on the other side. See what other forces of nature have shaped the offerings and added intention to the space. Stone and shell and crystal from past journeys join with river rocks and years and becomes enshrined. Kali dances, a Buddha smiles, a blue marble echoes the big blue marble we all walk upon. Other souls and their offerings, their intentions transforming the natural space just as surely as the falling rain rises in the stream and shapes its course. The water murmurs, the rock concurrs; approach all of living as if from a sacred place….Awake….Aware. Here I am both; of water falling among other things. Ceaselessly. All flowing to the sea to be swept with tides and rise again. Pass through. Become. Move on. From this cycle I drink and am the rain, the mist, the ocean dreaming walking on earth with undersea eyes. Not separate. Not at all.
Meanwhile in Greece….
Colleen left on Tuesday for a 3 week trip to Greece. Her group of friends (Debbie, Stacy and Ann) that she has known since childhood all turned 50 this past year and for their annual trip decided to go big. She went early to do some hiking, snorkling and beach before meeting up with them later this week,
