autumn – Page 22 – In the Woods

delivering a month of special light

10.12.12 ~ Old Lyme, Connecticut — Marsh Light Manor at Lookout Hollow created by Lori & Edward Lenz
10.12.12 ~ Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut

Luka built this manor house for his wife Inza and their family of light fareies at the base of this tree from the river rocks and marsh grasses. He created porches and windows to view and capture the light as it dances across the water. Mirrors and magic help Luka and his wife to “bottle” the light. Each of the children take turns delivering a month of special light to the plein-air artists who capture its distinct glow in paint.
~ Wee Faerie Village: Land of Picture Making

Now that some of the excitement has passed by, at least for us, I hope to share a few more fairy house posts in the coming days…

Auntie was transferred to a rehab center last week, a day or two after the storm. She’s able to walk a little and is making some progress in physical therapy there. We finally got up to see her yesterday and were grateful to know that she had some visitors in the hospital and at the rehab center.

Dad is on antibiotics now for bronchitis and we stopped by to see him, too, and showed him our storm pictures on the TV screen. He was somewhat impressed, but decided that the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 he survived when he 16 was far more destructive. He wasn’t feeling too well, but it was good to visit with him anyway.

We are overflowing with gratefulness for the gift of a wonderful young woman named Chelsea, who was hired to help out with Dad and Auntie’s care in September. What an awesome blessing she has been to our family! She has sat with Auntie in the hospital and at the rehab center, and darted back and forth between those places and the house, to give attention to both of the ancient ones. She has been a cheerful, hard-working, kind, calming and pleasant presence to have around and has gotten us through this difficult stretch, even coming in the evening and on the weekends. Thank you so much, Chelsea!!!

stone wall destroyed by superstorm

10.30.12 ~ Groton, Connecticut — 10.30.12 ~ Eastern Point Beach

The picture above shows that the storm surge was still relatively high. There is a sidewalk just behind that white fence and the water never comes up to the top of the wall like it is in this picture. We were planning to make our way over there to snap even more pictures, but the police suddenly decided it was time to have all of us leave the area so the city workers could start operating their equipment to clean up the beach! If we had anticipated that happening we would have gone out there first off and worked our way back. 🙂

In this picture you can see that a portion of the white fence is missing (left of center), and a bit of the wall with some of its top missing. In the summer this stretch of sand is covered with mothers chatting under umbrellas, their children playing, blankets, towels, beach balls, shovels and buckets – I had my place among them – and senior citizens reclining, dozing or reading in deluxe beach loungers, enjoying their time in the sun…

Although we were amazed to see the damage done by Superstorm Sandy here on our little part of the Connecticut shoreline, we know that New York and New Jersey had it far worse and our hearts go out to them. It is truly heartbreaking to see the TV footage of the devastation they are enduring while we sit in the comfort of our living room.

However, I have a hard time feeling much sympathy for the people in the wealthier beachfront areas of Connecticut. Many of their homes were destroyed in Hurricane Irene just last year and they foolishly rebuilt at the same locations, and were wiped out again this time.

Recently I read an article that referred to a “way of life that was based on a mindless materialism oblivious to nature and its boundaries.”* I think this is a case in point. Mother Nature is delivering us a strong message about where we should not be building our homes. Climatologists say we can expect more of these super storms in the near future and rising sea levels in general, due to global warming.

During the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, all the summer cottages and much of the land at Bluff Point, here in Groton, were swept away by the storm surge. Nobody rebuilt there. The newly formed peninsula became a state park. It seems like the most sensible response to such a loss. When will we stop stubbornly resisting the forces of nature and start trying to live in harmony with them?

*”Power of Nature” by Gitte Larsen, Søren Steen Olsen, and Steen Svendsen, Utne Reader, Nov-Dec 2012

sand covering everything

sand so deep it covered the curbs ~ 10.30.12 ~ Eastern Point Beach

The surge took large chunks of stone from the top of the wall separating the sandy beach from the grassy playground. The playground was now covered with sand and rocks from the wall. The sidewalk running along the playground side of the wall was badly damaged, too.

Still more pictures coming soon!

after the superstorm

Tuesday morning we went down to see how our beloved beach had fared in the storm. We kept taking turns with the camera so I’ll credit us both with the pictures in this post! Beach Pond Road was closed to traffic so we walked by the pond on our way to Eastern Point Beach. The storm surge had breached the dunes separating the pond from Long Island Sound, and pushed the water and debris across the street and up onto the lawns across the street.

I think city workers had already plowed away the sand on the road because we were not at all prepared for the scene that awaited us when we got to the beach itself! The road there was covered with about a foot and a half of sand!

More pictures coming soon!

be of good cheer

If I’ve got to see you when it’s raining deep inside the forest
I got to see you at the waning of the moon

Said oh, won’t you come on back?
Want you to be of good cheer
Come back home on the Celtic New Year

~ Van Morrison
♫ (Celtic New Year) ♫

A Cheerful Celtic New Year!

miakoda

Miakoda is a Native American word for the power of the moon. The gravity from last night’s full moon added 2 to 3 feet to Hurricane Sandy’s storm surge at high tide. We are safe and sound!

You may have heard of survivor guilt. I am suffering a case of power guilt. For some reason we cannot fathom, we never lost power from the super storm, even though the lights flickered here at times and the neighborhoods surrounding ours lost theirs.

Apparently I fell soundly asleep early last night and Tim went out to take storm surge pictures at high tide without me. He says I said good-bye but I don’t remember it. Amazing I could sleep through all the excitement! The pictures of the surge didn’t come out so well, but he got some amazing shots of the full moon in the storm clouds!

The full moon sailed bright through that Ocean on high,
And the wind murmured past with a wild eerie sound.
~ Emily Brontë
(The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë)

photos by Tim Rodgers

faerie of tree stumps and dead wood

Tym-Brrr is the faerie of tree stumps and dead wood, a subject often depicted in the foreground of landscape paintings. Twisted and broken trees suggest the awesome power of nature; the aftermath of a lightning storm or strong winds. Tree stumps, on the other hand, humanize an otherwise wild scene. Tym-Brr eats and plays in one cave, sleeps in another, and stores his sailboat for seeking out driftwood in the third. Clues to how trees become “never green” are burned into the outer walls.
~ Wee Faerie Village: Land of Picture Making

Fairies are invisible and inaudible like angels. But their magic sparkles in nature.
~ Lynn Holland
(A Faerie Treasury)

faerie goddess of green-growing things

Mihashirano, the faerie goddess of green-growing things, works hard alongside her mom, Amaterasu, the Sun Goddess, to help things grow along the river. The plants work hard purifying the air and water as well as supplying food and shelter for many creatures. Their work also benefits the artists in many of the same ways, including natural beauty that inspires their paintings. The location for Mihashirano’s tea house was chosen by a bird.
~ Wee Faerie Village: Land of Picture Making

Janet, all bundled up to brave the elements, located the mystical bird and Mihashirano’s sailboat at the tea house out on the water by using binoculars provided by the fairies on the shore. It was a very wet, raw and windy day especially down by the river.

We didn’t feel anything here in southern Connecticut, but last night at 7:12 pm there was an earthquake centered in Maine, 4.6 on the Richter scale, which was strong enough to shake homes as far south as northern Connecticut. Auntie is supposed to come home from the hospital today – I wonder if they felt the tremor up north there last night… And today would have been my mother’s 81st birthday – Happy Birthday, Mom!

living is joy enough

"Autumn. Young Woman in a Garden." by Konstantin Korovin — “Autumn. Young Woman in a Garden.”
by Konstantin Korovin

I find ecstasy in living; the mere sense of living is joy enough. How do most people live without any thoughts? There are many people in the world – you must have noticed them in the streets – how do they live? How do they get the strength to put on their clothes in the morning?
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Letters of Emily Dickinson, 1845-1886)