Sparkling Lotus Ink

source & sustenance .15

J. and I hit the local road on Monday so I could document some important missing links in my WaterWay project.  The vast pond above is "our" river's orgination site.  Since it's a pond that's part of another river's watershed I'm not sure of the correct technical name for such inception points.

It's not normal for the ice line to look this way so early in the calendar year.  Nevertheless pics say it's happening.  While we were there the entire parking lot, and a great deal of the closest ice, filled with vigorous skilled ice sailing people.  All-hands staffing level of Emergency and fire department vehicles from all the local towns. Multiple videographers and scads of encouraging well-wishers but zero info to be found about any of it when J. later looked through the local papers and websites.   
We moved on to a presumed quieter location.  This is a scant mile or two down-water of the pond.  A resident of the outer bank not visible in this picture showed us the exact place to stand where you can more or less see the pond's first snaking venture south.  It's a strange location - the bridge where I stood to take this picture.  Not Robert Johnson's Crossroads level strange but odd and out of whack in a way that makes you want leave a good deal sooner than you thought you would. 

[I can now add to my catalog of unwelcome local experiences the aforementioned resident of the outer bank suddenly approaching us as I was photographing an interesting tree anomaly shouting in a tone that managed to embrace an awkwardly misfired attempt at sarcastic humor and slight but deliberately obvious menace:

ARE THOSE HAZARDOUS TREES YOU'RE PHOTOGRAPHING?  ARE YOU ENVIRONMENTALISTS?????

With something approaching outward calm I explained I was documenting the river I'm documenting.  Along the way I take pictures of interesting trees.  I then post them on my blog.  He found this COOL and then after he asked again about our environmentalist affiliation - J. told him quite firmly 'we believe in trees' - we began The Extrication Process.

Tree Crowns at the Strange Place

A three-tree survival strategy

Here's the silhouette - it's somewhere between a classic cruciform design study and drunken Mardi Gras tourists two days in.

I just ... love this.

(but am unlikely to go back and discover what sort of trees they Are)

thus we move onward for the sustenance arc of our excursion.

It was fairly windy there by the river but the air had a lift and lilt to it that was unmistakably springlike.   On the drive along our way there we'd been talking back and forth about the extra early shift we're both sensing - especially within the rising life-force of the trees.  What were we to make of it?   We've seen years not quite this dramatically ready to shift seasons when March dumped many feet of snow and April was an icy nightmare with appreciable snow on top of that.  So we didn't - and still don't - know, really, what to make of it.  We enjoyed the moment.    And I took pictures of the pine grace admired in a previous post's comments.

She is large and thriving. 

Embrace Pose

Her gestures into the wind ...

and the sun said: yeah baby .13

Today I woke with sun in my eyes.  It was an extra wonderful thing after countless grey days made dismal and bleak with the ongoing roaring wind effect.   When the sun shines after a pronounced absence I especially love those times when I have an opportunity to free-float through the day on - not so much a whim as a very strong intuitive nudge.

One nudge after another I made my way to the back dooryard by mid-morning.  Paused on the deck to do a bit of intent staring at the ice-filled 'replacement' planters that were too shallow to grow truly thriving flowers.  But a few day's back I realized how they could be used quite productively. And also add new experience to my container growing repertoire: using each one as a separate container garden 'seed bed' for various biennials.  Am finalizing my seed list at the moment but need to integrate my shopping list with what's viable and on hand in my seed collection box.  Should have done it last night but was too tired from the day's activities far out-pacing my organic energy level.

I need to come down to this spot with my better camera to properly showcase the small cluster of river bushes and striplings that I love.  I don't visit them much because they need to keep their wildness there amidst the mossy rocks.  But I do move upstream a few times during no-ice phases of our brown months.  just to make sure that particular congregation isn't burdened by windfall branches.  Later I'll have to go out in clothes better suited to yard work.  Fleece isn't very compatible at all I have found.

Today I spotted my first land-based skunk cabbage of the year.  It's worrisome how early I started seeing new growth pushing out of the stream bed. Usually I don't see anything in the water for another month's time.  It's often the beginning of April before the plant's leaves unfurl in the land-based colonies.  Seeing the new life above so much sooner into the year evoked mixed feelings.  As a human who is finely tuned to green forms of life it's an automatically exuberant moment.   It's also a life-long habit.  I grew up near any number of streams and was lucky to have guided tours of a few on an ongoing basis over the years.  Heralding fresh signs of a new year's life force by searching out the earliest growths of skunk cabbage plants holds a deep experiential taproot in my soul.

One very kind and extremely good humored (yet perpetually poker faced) elder-man my family knew used to call me Little Miss Sharp Eyes.  We'd walk along that property's stream and he'd announce something he could see.  I'd locate the same thing.  But it wasn't always in the same place he'd seen it.  In which case he'd smile and tell me I'd won.

For quite awhile (seemed forever in young child terms ...) I'd accept this without a clue of what I'd won.  So I finally asked and he told me I'd won my sharp eyes a little more fully.   And he certainly did his part to show me innumerable ways eyes could See and search-out detail when outside walking.  He also taught me to address the sun as Grandfather and the moon as Grandmother.   I once asked him what he liked most in the world - expecting a wonderful nature story.  He grinned wide and spoke around it.  

"airplanes"

Years later he and his wife were on a plane that was held hostage on the runway.  It was somewhere in Europe during that window of time when such things appeared in alarming news breaks as the very worst form of terrorism.  Their involvement made it personal - a local story of great scope and ongoing conversation.  They were trapped on a plane at gunpoint in a foreign country for a significant number of hours.  When they arrived safely in NYC the press was waiting.  Local papers posted pictures of them that were taken as they left their initial government debriefing.   She looked shaken for sure but far more she looked hell bent and determined to have QUITE a word with any number of someone's Manager(s) before all was fully said and done.  He merely looked like he'd seen new things.   Undoubtedly with poker faced aplomb.   To this day I wonder if that experience dampened his enthusiastic love of planes.

The (very) gentle-man who taught me how to walk along a little stream so as to find innumerable tiny universes along the way also taught me a concept he called Power Station Bingo.  Upon reflection (and I mean in terms of the level of reflection I held around the time they'd been trapped on the runway during my early high school years) I don't think what he was talking about  ever had that name.  I think it was something he may have made up on the spot when some insatiably curious kid he was trying to teach to love the woods bedeviled him with questions he did not want to answer Just Then - for whatever combination of reasons. 

I could have been that kid because the questions I felt pressing enough to insist on immediate (and complete!!) answers never stopped at that phase of my life.  But I was just one of many who did not have a paternal presence in their life but were also lucky enough to move within his circles of community awareness. 

here's what he taught me about earth energy and how it moves:

Sometimes you go into a quiet little corner of a place and find four rocks.  Right in the center of the rocks you'll find an evergreen.   Sometimes you find the evergreen first but you'll also find rocks beneath its lowest boughs. 

All evergreens and rocks enjoy this arrangement but it becomes important to recognize with respect any time you're passing when the rocks are directly aligned with the compass points.  When they are both tree and rocks can sing but our ears don't remember how to hear them.  Other creatures do.  They are Everywhere.

Out and About .12

The above photo wasn't taken today but I wanted to share this pair of tree friends from our woods.  Love them and how much they love each other!  rapidly moving stream water was captured today.  And just as a reminder concerning where this busy moving water is headed ...

Below is a view of the local river I've been documenting - from a spot a modest number of miles west of the usual location.  Took the pics last Wednesday while I was out doing errands.  It wasn't a meditative sort of day.  It was a day to enjoy soaking up this area's overarching landscape energy before the wind started blowing again -  while also getting errand-y stuff done at a leisurely pace. Seemed right in line with that energy to indulge in a wee local side-trip in order to reconnect with my favorite spot to commune with this river.  The water is not nearly so distant here.   The bridge is much lower to the ground so even with the wind blowing I don't think I'd feel quite so much like I'm about to go on camera for the weather channel.  Know there's a way down to the water's edge on the eastern side of the bridge because I've often seen fishermen there during summer months.  Will wait 'til J's along to confirm and document.

Looking west.  This area is extremely GREEN - layer upon layer of it - in the summer.  Haven't spent much time at this location in the colder months but am looking forward to changing that.  Below we're facing east as the river heads towards the snaking curves that are familiar from my weeks of documentation.

Am fully cherishing the days like today and last Wednesday when the high winds still themselves and the sun remains visible.  Today it was only around for fleeting 20 minute windows here and there.  I was more than ready to welcome each break-through with grateful inner enthusiasm. The two trees in the center foreground of the above image have very strong/beckoning vibrations.  J. thinks it's private property there and I might not be able to get any closer.  Taking good camera and zoom lenses when we're able to go together. Although it's too far upstream to be visible from the usual location, am wondering if some of the trees below are oak sentries.  Love the way the trees in this location sidle all the way to the water's edge.   Note the gorgeously full white pine!

January Thaw .2

Let's take a little walk together.  You might remember all the leaves from a mid-autumn walk in many of the same places. As you can see they're still there settling further into the cellular world of the landscape's history.  On warmer February days I'll begin to groom the frog pond's rockscape in line with late winter pruning tasks.  But for now it's a symphony of decomposition.

Today was so warm that I expected to see a few oily black frog noses peeking through the slim passages of melted water.  Perhaps they sensed how brief the pleasant weather was going to be.  Am very thankful there was a break in the high to gale force winds of recent days so I had a chance for a lingering inspection tour before they descended again.  Looks like this may be our third consecutive January thaw when there's very limited time to be outside enjoying the smell of rising earth and perhaps managing to knock off a few of the lingering items on the Didn't Get Done list.

The stream water was very lively and crystal clear.  I took a little video at this spot and sent it to everybody I thought would be enchanted rather than annoyed.

The above stream views I habitually share are a familiar touchstone.  But when I keep walking into the woods the view quickly shifts to offer a fresh perspective.
not pictured: a daunting amount of fresh tree-fall debris. 
additional context:  on our first evening of so-called 'ownership' I discovered the landscaped pond was full of frogs.  J. discovered an enormous rock that grounds all energy and sight-lines in our backyard.
When we arrived the self-mulched area of the rock was dotted with Jack-in-the-Pulpits in full flower.    The following year I learned that in earlier spring Canadian anemones ring the rock's entire border.  Nearby is the first Hawthorne I noticed during my first full morning in residence.  It took me two magical hide-and-seek years to find its Grandmother.  Smaller rocks form stony breadcrumbs leading towards the heart of our little woods (pictured in the previous post with a look upwards at the heart's crown-land.

Since our arrival we've been encouraging various oak saplings throughout the property.  A few ring our shared hearthstone at the edge of the woods.

Before the third installment of my Thaw documentation let's take another moment to consider the lookout rock.

At some point the rock split.  A few spindly maples set their roots just there but all have died and subsequently fallen since our arrival.  Last year I used my grandmother's method of seeding woodland plants around our home's foundation to (hopefully) seed an additional colony of Jack in the Pulpits within the split.  Time will tell if I was successful. 

11. in which cohesion extends itself

Here at long last is the lovely winding brook that hooks our tiny stream into the powerful waterway of our closest river. 

I've only been here twice with yesterday being the second time.  The first time was during the late summer of our first year living in this place.  J. had been walking and riding his bike throughout the local byways.  Sometimes just after the peak of summer's Golden Hour we'd jump in the truck and he'd show me local sites he knew would be of interest to me.

Back then:  Even though the growing season's foliage was beginning to thin there was still too much vegetation to see the above side of the brook.  But yesterday I could plainly visualize the Way it must meander to the point I've already documented right here.  The portion of the brook pictured as this post's lede  was partially obscured with copious festoons of Virgin's Bower.  Their petals were dried to browning threads or fallen.  I leaned in so close, atop an unstable embankment, that I nearly toppled over in my effort to get a decent closeup of the nearest whirling seedheads yet-to-be.

A few moments later J. alerted me that someone had clocked us and was 'coming down'.  I asked what that meant without losing focus of framing options.  As is our way if he's driving or I'm taking pictures, I received an ongoing narration of all he observed of the woman's approach.   a woman, definitely, without a gun.  She's older.  Can't tell if she's angry or afraid ...

It turned out she was neither.  She'd noticed us stop in a place where nobody does that and then observed me lurching.  On what was a very warm evening. Thought it might be a health crisis in need of extra help.  We all exchanged names.  After four months of living here she was the first person to offer us a name and express awareness we existed as actual people rather than Whoever bought the house we'd purchased.

(now on the brink of a solid decade living in such a culture I do it too at least in casual social-construct conversation: automatically communicating via the now-ingrained Whoever thing.  As a description of somebody - an actual person who probably wouldn't like it any more than I did in the beginning - who wasn't there before.  Whoever.)

Sometimes within the first few years of living here and still not knowing more than one other neighbor by name we would marvel at how bizarre it was that this was obviously normal business as usual for people living in a terrain where a person really ought to know who they live in community with and be on at least sporadic speaking terms with them.  We would look at each other with slowly shaking heads whenever we had these discussions; dismayed by the folly of humans declaring each other irrelevant to a level of bedrock foolishness.  Then one would remind the other well we know (person in this story's name).  Closing in on a decade we don't have these conversations anymore.  We'd be able to list a couple dozen people between us and, in point of truth, part of why we wished to live here specifically was so we wouldn't feel forced into continuous social rigors brought on by closer proximity to other lives in different dwellings.

*~*

Many years later the same woman wandered, on a spur of the moment whim, into the first session of the library collage lab.  I didn't recognize her until after the fact nor did she recognize me.  She raised her hand quite promptly when I asked who believed they weren't creative.  And shook her head in disbelief when I assured them they'd all be leaving with a book they'd made themselves.  Later I observed her carefully searching through all the old national geographics.  It wasn't until I prowled back around as she was preparing to stitch that I saw she'd methodically tracked down every tiger image she could find.  And I hope never to forget the precise illumination of her smile and the soft lilt in her voice as she said to me I made a book.

A few weeks later we were rear-ended and my brain got dinged so the following month's planned session was postponed.  She'd come on the pre-arranged date - bringing with her paper she'd purchased in Italy years before and wished the program to use in some way.  But she never returned.  By then I'd realized who she was (She has a very common first name - the kind that might not stick out in a conversation unless you had another piece or two of personal meaning to attach) and kept hoping she'd re-appear.  Yesterday while I was at the brook I glanced up the hill of her front lawn a couple of times.  Wishing for a little past is prologue action.

In the town where I was raised a few hundred miles south of here I would not have thought twice about pulling my car around to the bottom of her drive, re-parking it, and  walking up to her door in order to re-introduce myself.  Here, after nearly a decade of being here, I simply made note of that fact.  Got back into my car to reflect on what had become a very meandering route home. Thought I'd had two posts worth of experiences and images but there on that brief semi-colon of a road so close to my own front door I realized it would actually be three.  Because I so loved and wished to include the way this speck of a moment could be expanded upon to include synchronicity with the collage theme going on at my other blog.

and far more importantly:

This is water directly connected to not just our stream but also our well. They're both given some derivation of the same water to hold.  So this tiny little nook of a place just a bit further down the massive hill on which I live IS my life.  Its water is the wild inverse of my life's ability to maintain itself in ways I consider normal and necessary.  If for no other reason - this part of my documentation effort deserves and needs to  stand alone.

~*~

From now on I'm going to walk to this place.  I'll let that walk be the sole purpose out on such occasions - treating a previous afterthought as its own purposeful excursion - rather than a quick something I accomplish in the midst of several other Out In The World things on my to-do list.  This is my literal back yard.  Will definitely walk there for any future visits.

10. be the change

The other day I realized I still had an ongoing reason to travel near the river/oaks twice a month.  Once a new year begins part of my ongoing routine involves picking up our winter bread shares from a local baker.  I thought I picked it up (from the designated local health food/general store) on Tuesdays but apparently I was wrong.  I'll be maintaining the same mid-week schedule until late Spring.  Today I was pleasantly surprised to admire a new mural just outside the store.  After learning I was there a day too soon I proceeded to the river.

Upon arrival I found a man quasi-napping in his car just to the right of the trees.  So I pulled in closer to the road hoping he'd be gone by the time I was heading back to my car. [he was not.] Headed along fenced pavement across the bridge in order to document the western river view.  This morning there was more of an icy rim at the bank edges but the river itself was moving with a lot more momentum and vigor than I've seen in several weeks.

If you look closely you'll see that a foot or more of previously iced snowfall is now below the waterline.    The wind was mild yet brisk in its velocity.  Traffic was very scarce.  I took my time crossing the road and walking down the boat launch on the other side of the bridge.

Ducks scattered from both water and banks at my approach.  The water moving east was really moving.   I saw evidence of a tussle between a female mallard and something that pulled a lot of feathers.  The scene lacked any hint of carnage.  I picked up a joined trio of feathers and released them into the air while wishing the duck safe passage.  Thought about what it would mean to my weekday structure and its points of focus if I were to officially make Wednesday a follow-the-water day.  It could mean so many things beyond just visiting various spots in order to document them.   The creek our little stream feeds into can be visited on foot provided there's not too much plowing build up and ice usurping the main road's shoulder.  I could, with time, become adept at a larger walking loop that most likely has unknown-to-me water ways and small ponds. 

In the days since my last River post I have moved from a sense of emotional cataclysm to one of certainty and redoubled focus on what it means for me to achieve and maintain good inner and outer balance.   I know any sort of healing from ruptured trust is inherently a form of grieving.  And this is never a linear trajectory.  I don't intend to write about that moment of my life in this space again but I know the reverb factor will inform what I do or don't write in any given post.

As I'm sitting here typing on my laptop I can only see the lower portion of the river flowing east in the image above.  It's so obviously moving.  Although water can be parsed down to molecules it's really far more continuous in its nature.  Finite only when actively manipulated and deliberately contained somehow.  I look at all the water around me and think about areas of this country/planet where people have their daily water piped-in for a staggering number of miles.   And whoever has the political clout/capital to put on the line has the lion's share of water.  Have seen, heard and read about it time after time.  Something so basic contained and withheld by so much greed.

Back in early '02 I thought about water manipulated into traveling great distance to fulfill a basic human need quite a lot.  My family was traveling through northern Italy.  During certain days of our two week road trip there we would often cross paths with vast panoramas dominated by monolithic sections of ancient Roman aqueducts.  I wondered how somebody had known where to start figuring out such a system in the first place - and how many people it had taken to prop-up and devote their lives to the person who had the idea and then to whomever carried it to enough fruition to be worth all the idea/engineering time.

Maybe this sort of far from magical feat has played a part in why we as a species are so sure we're the most intelligent life form on the planet.    Maybe?

.8 following a starry wish

Above is a slightly altered picture from yesterday's lowering sun phase approximately a half hour before sunset.  Stand still with me for a few minutes here at the Enfield lookout point, won't you?  We're overlooking a vast body of water called the Quabbin Reservoir.  This is a primary source of Boston drinking water.  The link I selected tells of towns Lost by way of deliberately sinking them.  Everything you see above, beautiful as it is, exists as a false landscape that was manufactured so that a roiling metropolis' human population 70 miles away could sustain their need for drinkable/safe water as the decades rolled by.

[as just one example the hilly peninsulas chaining one after the other as far as the eye sees are actually submerged mountain peaks.]

That said The Quabbin is an undeniably beautiful place to visit and wander around at length.  I lightened the pictures for this post because so many I know to be reading here constitute a Tree Crowd.  And there are most certainly seemingly endless crowds of trees telling the story of what has Become here at the reservoir park.  Also of note:  the peninsula on the left side of the top image is off limits to humans.  This is a place where the eagles come to nest and raise their young.   Birders with enormous scope lenses dominate the parking and first-row viewing spaces once these raptors have been spotted heading north. 

Yesterday in the later afternoon J. and I drove out to the Pioneer Valley for a seasonal ritual of great meaning to us.  Along the way I figured I'd take some pictures of the Boston area's primary water supply because even though it's not moving water it's certainly very significant water indeed.  It's also sacred ground for local fishermen and home to innumerable groves of vibrant birches and a pleasantly spooky long-abandoned apple orchard.  Since 9-11 anywhere remotely close to the water has been on lockdown or actively monitored by state employees in boats constantly on the prowl. 

I have vivid memories of what it was like here in the direct aftermath of an occasion when MA figured prominently in Security Failure news of huge magnitude.  That's because - macro to micro - in the same unprecedented window of experience I spent a great deal of time here.  This is the place - and it was the time - where/when I first began to actively merge the sciencey part of my nature interests with the vibrational certainties I'd yet to collate very effectively.   It's how I found personal stability and meaning during a time when so many people I knew kept asking me how they could/should find it.

below see the Eagle Zone in its entirety.

~*~*~*~*~

As twilight fell we drove through a great many of our history's familiar haunts.  Amherst has strong meaning beginning with the sixth month mark of our initial merging together.  And - two months in between not-being and being-All - I was staying in nearby Hadley when I realized ALL OF A SUDDEN that I was deeply in love with J. and drove all over the rural highways looking for a pay phone on which to call and privately tell him Back There in the shared hometown I had recently left for good and all.)

Yesterday was once the future.  And within it - all these years later - we arrived at a stop sign directly across the road from a house and property we've kept track of in an automatically loving way for the last few arcs of our story.  In its yard is a Beech tree I've bonded with a couple of extra-memorable times.  And in point of fact I have waaay too many pictures earmarked to include in a post about The Silent Communicator sometime in the new year.  Yesterday a large truck blocked any decent view of it. So I looked at the house and how it's changed since I had opportunities to examine certain portions of it in a close-up fashion.

When we got home I looked up the listing because our price guessing had been all over the map. In the end we amalgamated everything and estimated something pretty close to the asking price.  So there's a pointless skill to hone, eh?  price is right scenarios for things that have no bearing on one's own life.  And reading the realtor's layout description gave me serious vertigo.  Just to see the place described as a normalized home-life setting as, no doubt, originally intended.  I wondered if the yard still contained a sizeable Chicken compound.

[this place is known to us because our son lived there during his college years with 9 other people.  Every semi-private alcove of space that could be used as a bedroom was deemed to be such in order to keep the individual sliding scale rent rates as low as possible.  Fourteen years ago the three of us spent Christmas day together in the otherwise empty house there.  But evidence of extensive and frenetic habitation was all around us on that switched-plans day.  One of T's roomates had their dog sitter bail at the very last moment and he agreed to stay there for the animal's wellbeing.  Shortly before eleven on Christmas Eve our family plans pivoted for what proved to be a memorable holiday tale we enjoy re-telling to this day - heavy emphasis on the dog and the way she and J. took to each other like Long Losts.]
~*~*~*~*~*~

This morning I woke up wondering who might have the means and vision to buy this place and either make it the home and studio it once was or revert to using it as an income base for the very classic MA rite of young adulthood life lived among kindred peers in an old farmhouse loaded in equal measure with charm and windy drafts.  Every time I imagined people with the means for either I further imagined these people had a child. And the child ran straight to the Beech tree when the family first toured the [extensive] gardens.  And the way the child hugged the tree and leaned back to stare up at it made their parents smile at each other.  Yes.  This is their Place.  Screw one of their older siblings foolproof moneymaking plan of letting yet another generation of students run rampage. They'd figure it out to the bare bone - rent out the studio to a low key grad student and set about having a life they meant to live as deliberately as possible. 

I wondered if it could (still) be possible:  if a specific magnificent tree and a child not yet entirely shuttered by Devices could be destined for mutual companionship for a very long time to come.  Still.  Still.  Could that still happen?  Don't know if I'm able to actively believe it could and will but I'm certainly inclined to wish for such a lovely wish to be made real.

I am probably one of the least happy-ending dependent/Hallmark channel sort of people I know.  But far more importantly I want that magnificent tree to remain in place and authentically valued by a human companion.  And for that alliance to mean, on many levels of the deepest kind, absolutely everything to somebody quite young who has so much to figure out and survive largely because their human predecessors quite deliberately chose to drop the ball time after time.

  Last week when I visited the river I took many pictures.  In between two images of ice-encrusted river bank the above image appeared.  I thought of posting it as an Other contribution to the re-connection but also thought doing so lacked a viable context.  Then I thought: wait until it's time to make a wish publically.  Huh?  but now that quiet inner suggestion makes a little bit of sense.

.7 sharpening everyday senses

Today's morning Out took a different directional turn first thing in the morning but on my way back home  from my usual lineup of activities I noticed a dirt turnout close to the River Bridge was clear enough for me to risk parking on its icy crust.  I'd worn my thickest thermal socks and winter boots because I'd planned to walk around somewhere before I went home.   After I parked I followed some fresh and clearly purposeful coyote tracks.  They led to the western bank of a tributary I first noticed for what it was during this visit earlier in the fall.

The apparent whitish haze in the mid-distance is actually ice.  It's currently coating every leaf and branch in the outside world.

All vegetation was still as can be in the absence of wind.  Not so the birds scavenging with fierce intent.  They were a constant flurry of highly focused motion - much too busy to talk among themselves let alone pay much attention to me crunching my way along the stable ledge of water bank.  I'd never been here previously.  Only gazed at others parked in this spot in order to walk where I was now walking - wondering what their business was.  As to my own business on this day:  I followed my four legged relative's tracks trotting busily back and forth no doubt on the trail of small or medium sized rodents.

Stood for several long moments breathing deeply at this spot.  It was very cold (mid teens) to be standing still but I couldn't bear to rush this first introductory visit.  I kept smiling as I made my determined way towards the river and oaks.  I could do that because there was no wind today.  Had there been I might have gotten back in the car.  Had I done that I would have discovered all the snow blocking my usual parking space had melted in our recent rains.  I would have been warmer but I would have missed so much.  And am glad I didn't.

I took the above on my double-time lope back to the car.  By then my fingers actively hurt from the cold as did my toes.  I'm posting it out of sequence so you can easily compare what a difference a half an hour and some moody cloud cover can make in these parts.

 I crossed the road as soon as I spied safe and relatively sensible opportunities to shoot the western view from a different perspective.  The foraging birds were everywhere amidst the brush and marsh grasses.  I felt ecstatic to catch sight of the Oak pair on the other side of the bridge.

I chose the two images above (east facing first, then west) to share because they show so many variations of the way moving water changes form as a very gradual process.  Below all three Oaks share the same frame from a heightened perspective just before the bridge's sudden descent.

I was very joyous to be here again but kept my exchanges internal.  At the higher elevation the ice crust was thicker and slippery.  My imagination's engineer - always so eager to slide right on over into metaphor and potentiality - wasn't silent so much as otherwise engaged.  Today I was simply a woman walking briskly - one eye cocked towards the water.  Watching all the different layers of ways water slows down with the cold.   Paying special attention to some new wind/storm damage to the lunar oak.  Walking all around the pair's trunks about five feet away from them with my right palm extended towards their bark so we could exchange vibrational hellos.  I recognized that it can be as joyous as it is vexing (as well as, let's face, often just as pragmatically likely as not to be the Biggest Mistake Ever) to throw out every plan and rule book and ethical premise a person authentically values.  Just as a way to keep up more cogently with what's actually happening in and around all our various spheres of influence.

But mainly I simply was.  There.  I was There.  Taking my place - even though it moved around a lot today - here in this landscape.  I felt both accepted and recognized. 

Above is something new for all of us!  A view of the western river from the opposite bank.  I made special note of the hardwoods right at the edge of the river bank here and there on the right hand side of this image.  Wondered how many of them were Oak sentries as indicated by the Greeter.  The scent of winter's approach is astringent but also crumbly with blown seeds and dried vegetation.  I suddenly and abruptly noticed I  was missing the vast symphony of plant-scents I've come to associate with being there.  On this side of the river most everything's been cleared away for an extensive private boat launch.  I saw how that type of development changes everything.  Real river bank is excavated and taken away in order to replace what was there with who knows how much tonnage of rough-chunked granite.  I saw a bird flying in very low over the water - most likely hoping to score some lunch.

My hands felt like they'd take half an hour (twice that as it turned out ...)  to stop burning.  My feet and nose weren't far behind.  I double-hoofed it back across the road and beelined straight to the turnoff where I'd parked.  By the time I was home the sky was completely grey.  It's now three hours later still and I just checked our weather forecast.  Seems there have been squall bands skewing all around us throughout the afternoon.

 

running strong .6

This morning I woke early.  Could hear the sound of fast-moving water even with the storm windows down.  When I opened the door in Jim's office to listen through just a screen the NOISE of the water's movement was exhilarating.

The picture above faces upstream/northeast.  Below faces west.  The stream doesn't run in a straight line; it veers sharply to the right at a 45 degree angle.   My plan to follow and photograph where it goes after it leaves the farm's barnyard has been thwarted for the day.    There's a missing link in what I've documented so far - a place close enough that there's no excuse not to go and complete one section of our local watery network.  

Today was a good one to spend some time standing quietly with swiftly moving water.  It's mesmerizing to listen and watch.  The longer I stand doing just that the more clear it grows that water is inevitably and organically true to itself.   Since beginning this impulsive follow-where-it-goes project I've had days and a couple of evenings when I found it hard to think of anything else.  To want to think about anything else. 

When I first went outside the cow featured in the Grandfather Hickory post was standing right at the pool where our stream re-appears from the culvert.  I could see she was waiting for the pool to fill just so before she drank.   Or maybe she waited for the white water bubbles to settle before lowering her head to the surface.  I watched her having her post-rain morning outside.  Then turned my attention to an evergreen on our property that's been calling my attention quite a lot in recent weeks.  Don't think I'll live long enough to learn something about every tree here.  But I'm doing my best not to sleep walk too much of the time.

While I was searching for the above image to close out the post with a quick shift back to Green and Balmy I realized I've yet to stand in the stream.  It's always seemed so forward and presumptuous to even imagine doing such a thing...

Glacial Potholes

Also of interest in Shelburne Falls.  Seriously.  Stand still with me and look.