place – Page 9 – In the Woods

everything is flowing

Blue Marble image of North America
by NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

In the belly of the furnace of creativity is a sexual fire; the flames twine about each other in fear and delight. The same sort of coiling, at a cooler, slower pace, is what the life of this planet looks like. The enormous spirals of typhoons, the twists and turns of mountain ranges and gorges, the waves and the deep ocean currents – a dragonlike writhing.
~ Gary Snyder
(A Place in Space)

Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succor of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have a clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.
~ J. R. R. Tolkien
(The Return of the King)

Contemplating the lace-like fabric of streams outspread over the mountains, we are reminded that everything is flowing — going somewhere, animals and so-called lifeless rocks as well as water. Thus the snow flows fast or slow in grand beauty-making glaciers and avalanches; the air in majestic floods carrying minerals, plant leaves, seeds, spores, with streams of music and fragrance; water streams carrying rocks both in solution and in the form of mud particles, sand, pebbles, and boulders. Rocks flow from volcanoes like water from springs, and animals flock together and flow in currents modified by stepping, leaping, gliding, flying, swimming, etc. While the stars go streaming through space pulsed on and on forever like blood globules in Nature’s warm heart.
~ John Muir
(Meditations of John Muir: Nature’s Temple)

Happy Earth Day!

a place under the stars

nasa.llori.orionnebula — “LL Ori & The Orion Nebula” by NASA, ESA & The Hubble Heritage Team

The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces, is “Look under your foot.” You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place an hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.
~ John Burroughs
(Farm Journal, September 1908)

grackles by the sea

4.5.12.0913 — 4.5.12 ~ St. Marys, Georgia

Last April we took a trip to visit our son and daughter-in-law in Georgia. When we got home I started posting pictures on my blog of the places we visited, but never finished. Since I have a little time now I decided to post some more of our photos. (For anyone interested, the first batch of pictures started here.) The following pictures of boat-tailed grackles were captured at the Howard Gilman Memorial Park on the waterfront of St. Marys, Georgia. The park has a lovely large water fountain and on the day we visited it was doubling as a bird bath!

4.5.12.0918 — 4.5.12 ~ St. Marys, Georgia

4.5.12.0944 — 4.5.12 ~ St. Marys, Georgia

To claim, at a dead party, to have spotted a grackle,
When in fact you haven’t of late, can do no harm.
~ Richard Wilbur
(New & Collected Poems)

4.5.12.0963 — 4.5.12 ~ St. Marys, Georgia

4.5.12.0964 — 4.5.12 ~ St. Marys, Georgia

Few people know so clearly what they want. Most people can’t even think what to hope for when they throw a penny in a fountain.
~ Barbara Kingsolver
(Animal Dreams)

4.5.12.0967 — 4.5.12 ~ St. Marys, Georgia

4.5.12.0968 — 4.5.12 ~ St. Marys, Georgia

Birds know themselves not to be at the center of anything, but at the margins of everything. The end of the map. We only live where someone’s horizon sweeps someone else’s. We are only noticed on the edge of things; but on the edge of things, we notice much.
~ Gregory Maguire
(Out of Oz: The Final Volume in the Wicked Years)

4.5.12.0971 — 4.5.12 ~ St. Marys, Georgia

4.5.12.0980 — 4.5.12 ~ St. Marys, Georgia

4.5.12.1036 — 4.5.12 ~ St. Marys, Georgia

photos by Tim Rodgers

words everywhere

1.19.13.ellisisland — new arrivals only allowed in fair weather
The Book Barn ~ 1.19.13 ~ Niantic, Connecticut

Recently we spent a couple of hours at one of our favorite places, a used bookstore named the Book Barn, in the coastal village of Niantic, Connecticut. The Book Barn has three locations within a mile of each other, two are “downtown” and at the main site there is a huge barn full of books on three levels, surrounded by smaller structures which are also full of books. The complex houses about half a million books at any given moment.

1.19.13.luckycatsign — Lucky is a tiny black cat who hangs out
in the outbuilding called the “Last Page”

1.19.13.lastpage — 1.19.13 ~ Niantic, Connecticut

If one wants to sell books to the store she must take a number at “Ellis Island,” the receiving spot for new additions. We love to browse the endless stacks of books, pet the friendly resident cats, and read all the creative signs found in the gardens and on and around the buildings. As one might expect from book lovers, words are found everywhere: reminders, warnings, directions, suggestions, quips and puns.

1.19.13.shelfsign — sign in the Haunted Book Shop

1.19.13.newarrival — 1.19.13 ~ Niantic, Connecticut

I feel the need of reading. It is a loss to a man not to have grown up among books… Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.
~ Abraham Lincoln
(Abraham Lincoln, a Man of Faith & Courage: Stories of Our Most Admired President)

1.19.13.gargoyle — garden gargoyle perched on top of a large stone

1.19.13.smallstatue — a thinker sitting at the bottom of the stone

1.19.13.kindledeath — death due to Kindle

Of course we came home with an armful of interesting books to read! I may love my Kindle but will always have a special place in my heart for paperback and hardcover books!!

1.19.13.piratelarger — 1.19.13 ~ Niantic, Connecticut

The following video is a bit long, but the beginning of it offers a good idea about the look and feel of the place…

a sacred zone

shell by Keith Shannon
Monomoy National Wildlife Refuge, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Not a day goes by that I don’t take a walk on the beach. The beach is truly home, its broad expanse of sand as welcoming as a mother’s open arms. What’s more, this landscape which extends as far as the eye can see, always reminds me of possibility. It is here I can listen to my inner voice, shed inhibitions, move to the rhythm of the waves, and ask the universe unanswerable questions. That is why when I found myself at a crossroads in my marriage and my life, I ran away to Cape Cod and spent a year by the sea, I was sure this place, so full of my personal history, would offer clarity. … The beach to me is a sacred zone between the earth and the sea, one of those in-between places where transitions can be experienced – where endings can be mourned and beginnings birthed. A walk along the beach offers the gift of the unexpected. Scan the horizon and glimpse the endless possibilities. Stroll head down and encounter one natural treasure after another. Tease the tides and feel a sense of adventure. Dive into the surf and experience the rush of risk.
~ Joan Anderson
(A Walk on the Beach)

those songs graze like buffalo

When music is your life, there is a key that gets you to the core. I am so grateful that I still have Crazy Horse, knock on wood. You see, they are my window to the cosmic world where the muse lives and breathes. I can find myself there and go to the special area of my soul where those songs graze like buffalo. The herd is still there, and the plains are endless. Just getting there is the key thing, and Crazy Horse is my way of getting there. That is the place where music lives in my soul. It is not youth, time, or age. I dream of playing those long jams and floating over the herd like a condor. I dream of the changing wind playing on my feathers, my brothers and sisters around me, silently telling their stories and sharing their spirits with the sky. They are my life.
~ Neil Young
(Waging Heavy Peace)

magic apples

“Vase with Apples and Foliage” by Henri Fantin-Latour

This little paradise was a happy place. Odin and the other gods often visited, marveling at Iduna’s kindness and delighting in her humor and her wit. Yet there was another reason that they came; Iduna possessed a special treasure — a golden chest of magic apples that kept all those who ate them ever young. Truly it was the precious fruit that kept the gods immortal. Odin knew the value of these apples. He never ventured on a journey without a few to take along.
~ Marianna Mayer
(Iduna & The Magic Apples)

sunshine peculiarly genial

"Autumn Glory" by Willard Metcalf — “Autumn Glory” by Willard Metcalf

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October. The sunshine is peculiarly genial; and in sheltered places, as on the side of a bank, or of a barn or house, one becomes acquainted and friendly with the sunshine. It seems to be of a kindly and homely nature. And the green grass, strewn with a few withered leaves, looks the more green and beautiful for them. In summer or spring, Nature is farther from one’s sympathies.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
(The American Note-books)

walking is discovery

4.2.12 ~ New London, Connecticut — Janet (left) and Nancy (right)
4.2.12 ~ Alewife Cove, Ocean Beach, New London, Connecticut

Well, I finally figured out how to use the latest version of PhotoShop – I have no idea how many versions there were between my old one and this one, but I was totally lost… Now I can post some pictures of things from the last six months. In April Janet’s sister Nancy was visiting and the three of us spent a lovely afternoon on the reclaimed dune area at Ocean Beach. I love the shoreline in the off-season. Enjoy!

All walking is discovery. On foot we take the time to see things whole.
~ Hal Borland
(Stopping: How to Be Still When You Have to Keep Going)