nature
That Old Saying
Hiking With Poems
Passage
by John Brehm
In all the woods that day I was
the only living thing
fretful, exhausted, or unsure.
Giant fir and spruce and cedar trees
that had stood their ground
three hundred years
stretched in sunlight calmly
unimpressed by whatever
it was that held me
hunched and tense above the stream,
biting my nails, calculating all
my impossibilities.
Nor did the water pause
to reflect or enter into
my considerations.
It found its way
over and around a crowd
of rocks in easy flourishes,
in laughing evasions and
shifts in direction.
Nothing could slow it down for long.
It even made a little song
out of all the things
that got in its way,
a music against the hard edges
of whatever might interrupt its going.
In Town But Not Inside
Back On The Trail
The Poems Of Our Climate
It’s time to break out my favorite Wallace Stevens poem for a post title–“at the end of winter, when afternoons return.” None of us could get enough sunshine:
Snow!
It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like….
Last Colors
The colors have peaked, some trees are already naked, the upper gate to Millcreek Canyon is closed, and it’s dark at 5:30. We’re officially in the long slide into winter. But take heart from the words of John Muir:
“This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dried all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.”
Fall Light
There was some really good light on yesterday’s hike (to Lake Solitude via Silver Lake):
And there was also a TREE OF BEES at the south end of the lake (!). We thought this dead log looked like a nice place to sit while we had a snack, but as soon as butt met trunk I noticed lots of bees hanging out. We wisely chose another seat and watched the bees going in and out of the trunk via an old knothole. If you got close enough you could hear the hum of the hive from inside!
I’ve read about wild hives living in hollow trees* but never thought I’d see one. Well done, nature.
*In, um, the Winnie the Pooh books, but still.