Midwinter in Deadhorse Gulch

or why I feed the birds....

Conference of the birds

I share the left over cold porridge with the birds, leaving it on the stump under the garden tree.

The snowy morning becomes radiant with plumage:  at least 5 doves, 2 woodpeckers, a myriad little tweety birds, the usual ubiquity of starlings crawling like vermin all over the suet,  and, in the absence of the hoopoe, a Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata) fetches his portion of oats up into the snowy tree.

Come you lost Atoms to your Centre draw,

And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw:

Rays that have wander'd into Darkness wide

Return and back into your Sun subside

On the rockface: 15 January

Barely making it, hunkered in survival mode, the most insignificant of lives wait for this, too, to pass.

Slim harvest of comfort on a day which once would have heralded release. Once were warriors, now base survival is all that is left in shades of black and white. Colour-less.

Thin exotic threads from the east are all there is for shelter from the storm. Windhorses in stagnant air, however,  can only do so much.

Extremity forces vows: No more! The last! and all that troubled drama which makes the long dark nights rowdy with unwelcome unrest.

Earthshine: don't go to sea tonight

Living life like a ballad in a cold snap so bitter it feels that bones must shatter and crack with a freezing of the marrow.

Needing some fresh air and something from the shop, I bundle up and go out walking just at dusk, to discover sublime earthshine: the new moon lying in the old moon's arms.

Fortunately I had no plans to go out to sea around about now,  but I do know that the tides at my old salt water playground promise to be king this week, pulling out extra low to come back extra high.

For tonight I am here in the mountains, where the little crescent is so bright it lights up the sky, competing even with streetlighting. The brilliance of that sliver of a fingernail paring crescent gives me hope. I don't mind sending a petition up with the new moon as it swells: a salt water life for the health of the mermaid's tail. Please.

I saw the new moon late yestreen 

Wi' the auld moon in her arm; 

And if we gang to sea, master, 

I fear we'll come to harm.'

Still life with woodpecker

Weatherman promised clear skies and low temps but I wake up to snow, snow, snow.

A Northern Flicker  guarding the suet is my morning entertainment. Starlings are not gonna mob this one!

Doves take the higher ground and wait out the woodpecker/starling skirmishes. Peace and love, knowing its place is patience. Okay so patience it is.

Maybe I will never get tired of the magic of snow laden boughs and a minimalist white-out world

Sunday morning coming down

Cloud has been pretty low all day. The mountaintops were shrouded when I went out for a morning walk: not much light, but a lot of white above, below, all around.

The berms which were ploughed into place on December 20th, hold their frozen wave shape still. With more snow in the forecast for this week they might even grow. I go out early, to shovel the sidewalks, after a lazy lie-in, finishing Deon Meyer's latest skop, skiet en donder novel. I manage to pull something in my lower back. Note to self: always loosen up, and warm up before taking up the snow shovel. I know that and yet I didn't. I pay the price with pain. Winter in a cold climate can make a body old. Quickly.

Across the street the snowman of the same vintage as the berms greets me with a cheery wave. He is holding up well. This is the part where I start getting real real cabin fever (hence the retreat into skop, skiet en donder)

A block or two down I come to a different answer to the old riddle of what is black and white and red all over. A berry tree (Mountain Ash? Hmmmm really not sure). Certainly, by the chatter, it is the place to be for bird gossip on this Sunday morning.

I walk down an almost deserted Main street to set up anti-virus scans on my library computers.

While I am waiting for the scans to run I step out to the coffeeshop in the old bank building on the corner. I am the only customer, giving me opportunity to take in the latest copy of Sunset magazine. The first article which catches my eye is this one which tells me that Hawaiians are the most contented people in the county. Uh-huh.  I look out at the snow and think about what it takes to achieve the aloha state, and how all things Hawaiian keep turning up in my life.

Then I read about a San Francisco family going all low tech and unplugged. This has me thinking about how, living so geographically remote, in the true rural west of the United States not the urban, moneyed west of the magazine, the majority of my meaningful human connections are virtual these days. Social media and the internet connect me to a loose tribe of familiars in a mysterious web: my imaginary friends.

Fetching my mail at the the post office across the road, a lovely owl flies into my life. What a gift! The delicacy and sensitivity of the detailing of white ink brushwork on black paper cannot be captured in the photos. Pueo - aumakua - an ancestral spirit for my altar from the brush of one of these very familiars I was thinking about when reading the article on the urban unplugging. My "imaginary" friends put ancestors on my altar with artwork made in studios heated by wood stoves, set in ancient forests. Technology is all so relative. Those of us who live in the wilds, and who live wild,  truly appreciate our connections and the conduit they provide for mysterious movement.

More of Valerianna's art can be found in her Etsy shop here while the RavenWood studio blog, where one can sometimes get lucky and meet the venerable Pasha cat, is here.

Roughing it with the messenger: the hour come at last

Wept when I saw this today.

Reducing library open hours in a rural community which loves, needs and uses its library has to be one of the hardest things - up there with having to shoot one's horse. This little library has gone from 48 open hours a week to 19.5.

Took my sadness to the snowy hills and met this lovely watcher.

I think this a Rough Legged hawk (Buteo lagopus). If I am right, then he is just visiting for the winter. In summer he will soar and breed in the Arctic tundra.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?