Kathleen Dean Moore – In the Woods

first nor’easter of the season

3.12.23 ~ Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center

How very strange to go through December, January and February without a single nor’easter! And to finally get one in March. Who knows? This may be the last one I had a chance to anticipate before the move. I’ve always enjoyed the drama and excitement these storms bring with them.

A Nor’easter is a storm along the East Coast of North America, so called because the winds over the coastal area are typically from the northeast. These storms may occur at any time of year but are most frequent and most violent between September and April. … Nor’easters usually develop in the latitudes between Georgia and New Jersey, within 100 miles east or west of the East Coast. These storms progress generally northeastward and typically attain maximum intensity near New England and the Maritime Provinces of Canada. They nearly always bring precipitation in the form of heavy rain or snow, as well as winds of gale force, rough seas, and, occasionally, coastal flooding to the affected regions.
~ National Weather Service website

the Canada goose couple, back to claim their nesting island in the pond

We took a nice long walk at the nature center the day before this nor’easter arrived. So delighted to see mama and papa goose swimming around the pond together. We first saw mama sitting on her island nest on the last day of March last spring. We kept checking back and got to see her little goslings exploring the world near the end of April. Maybe we’ll get to do it again this year.

reindeer lichen clinging to branches reaching out over the pond

Our ancestors spoke to storms with magical words, prayed to them, cursed them, and danced for them, dancing to the very edge of what is alien and powerful — the cold power of ocean currents, chaotic winds beyond control and understanding. We may have lost the dances, but we carry with us a need to approach the power of the universe, if only to touch it and race away.
~ Kathleen Dean Moore
(Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World)

But, as it turned out, there wasn’t much to get excited about this time — for us. It started raining Monday afternoon and rained and rained. The wind blew and blew. Tuesday evening there were a few snowflakes in the mix but nothing to stick. We didn’t even get the coating to 3 inches of snow predicted for the coastline here. But I see things are much different inland…

subtle joy

7.24.16.3364 — 7.24.16 ~ female mallard, Richmond, New Hampshire

In the woods, sitting still, there is subtle joy in listening to the tiniest sounds. There is delight in the textures of light.
~ Joan Tollifson
(Awake in the Heartland)

7.24.16.3381 — 7.24.16 ~ Richmond, New Hampshire

We, all of us — blue-green algae, galaxies, and bear grass, philosophers and clams — will some day dissipate into vibrating motes. In the end, all of natural creation is only sound and silence moving through space and time, like music.
~ Kathleen Dean Moore
(The Pine Island Paradox: Making Connections in a Disconnected World)

7.24.16.3421 — 7.24.16 ~ Richmond, New Hampshire

clipped by the elbows

SławekStaszczuk.cormorant — cormorant by Sławek Staszczuk

Is that a cormorant perched on the next stump-island? He snaps open his wings and leaves them outstretched, as if they were hung on the line, clipped by the elbows to dry in the dusk. When we get closer, he will pull in the laundry and lift his feet restlessly – one, then the other.
~ Kathleen Dean Moore
(Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature)

tropical downpours

calm before the storm ~ 7.3.14 ~ Groton, Connecticut

Hurricane Arthur is still to the south of us, and is expected to miss us and head northeast and out to sea. But we are experiencing tropical downpours here in Groton as the outer bands of rain brush by southeastern Connecticut. At 3:00 p.m. we already had 1.9 inches of rain and it is still coming down in torrents.

I often say that I love the excitement of storms, as long as they don’t get too exciting. This one fits the bill. We’ve been keeping a wary eye on this storm since it formed off the coast of Florida and are now relieved that it isn’t going to be too bad. Independence Day parades and fireworks have all been cancelled, but the rest of the weekend promises to be sunny and pleasant.

Will be busy this week getting ready for two big events next weekend, a baby shower for Larisa and a wedding for Tim’s cousin. Before those, a trip to IKEA with Janet. A night out at the Amherst Early Music Festival with Tim. This time we will see “Late Medieval sacred motets and secular love songs performed by award-winning women’s vocal quartet Anonymous 4.” A motet is “a short piece of sacred choral music, typically polyphonic and unaccompanied.” I can’t wait!

a way of life

Kentford Farm ~ 5.28.14 ~ Stonington, Connecticut

To be worthy of the astonishing world, a sense of wonder will be a way of life, in every place and time, no matter how familiar: to listen in the dark of every night, to praise the mystery of every returning day, to be astonished again and again, to be grateful with an intensity that cannot be distinguished from joy.
~ Kathleen Dean Moore
(Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature)

wild comfort

5.10.13.5250 — apple blossoms ~ 5.10.13 ~ Storrs, Connecticut

The bottom may drop out of my life, what I trusted may fall away completely, leaving me astonished and shaken. But still, sticky leaves emerge from bud scales that curl off the tree as the sun crosses the sky. Darkness pools and drains away, and the curve of the new moon points to the place the sun will rise again. There is wild comfort in the cycles and the intersecting circles, the rotations and revolutions, the growing and ebbing of this beautiful and strangely trustworthy world.
~ Kathleen Dean Moore
(Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature)

effulgent

dragonfly ~ 8.27.13 ~ Durham, North Carolina

Is it a mistake to look to the world to tell us the meaning of our plummeting lives? Maybe we all have the power to shape our own structure, the structure of our metaphoric wings, what lifts us — our character maybe, call it our spirit. We all in our own ways catch the light of the world and reflect it back, and this is what is bright and surprising about a person, this rainbow shimmer created from colorless structure. Maybe there is no meaning in the world itself – no sorrow. In fact, no good or bad, beginning or end. Maybe what there is, is the individual way each of us has of transforming the world, ways to refract it, to create of it something that shimmers from our spread wings. This is our work, creating these wings and giving them color.
~ Kathleen Dean Moore
(Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature)

Time seems to fly by so quickly, and yet, each day seems so long in the living. Especially in August. Please! One crisis at a time!!!

Near the end of August my sister and I finally and reluctantly decided that our aunt, who is 98, required more care than we could reasonably provide for her. The family doctor pulled some strings and found her a place in a “good” nursing home, much to our relief. She is now “settled in” there.

Our father, who is 91, is doing a little better, but is still on oxygen and remains very weak. So far my sister and brother-in-law feel they can manage him at home. He will probably never walk again, even with his walker… But I have to keep a watchful eye on my sister’s well-being – she has done more for the ancient ones than most people, including myself, would have or could have done.

8.31.13 ~ Durham, North Carolina — 8.27.13 ~ Durham, North Carolina

At the end of the month I spread my wings and accepted my daughter’s invitation to fly to North Carolina to visit her and my son-in-law in their new digs. It was the first time I flew by myself, although I had a flash of insight on the plane – I wasn’t flying by myself at all – there were many other people on board, fellow humans all with their own ways of transforming the world. All of us one. The flights there and back were spiritual highs for me!

Visiting Dima & Larisa for five days was wonderful! Very humid weather put something of a damper on outdoor adventures, but we had fun gardening in the early morning hours and decorating the living room and kitchen together one fun afternoon. We explored Durham in the air-conditioned car and talked and talked and talked. And had some great meals out and even better meals from their kitchen and grill. Had loads of fun taking pictures! I also came home with a lot of spider and mosquito bites for souvenirs. 🙂

The trip did me a world of good – thank you so much for your gracious hospitality and welcoming arms, my wonderful kids!

passionate heron

7.14.13 ~ Groton, Connecticut — great egret ~ 7.14.13 ~ Eastern Point

“Patience” comes from the same ancient roots as “petals” — to open like a flower, to unfurl, to receive the stroke of a moth’s tongue and the ministrations of a bee. And so we are given “passive” and “patient” and “passionate.” The philosopher Spinoza thought that passion was the opposite of action: to be acted upon rather than to act. And so a heron is passionate in this odd, old-fashioned way — open, unresisting, transparent, suffering the sense impressions to flow through its mind, exquisitely aware, a single still point of clarity.
~ Kathleen Dean Moore
(Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature)