do you believe ?

the wind she blows and blows and blows

Days and days of winds here.  The grass blows, the house rattles.  It has been steady in the 20's with bigger gusts.  Hard to work outside or walk easily in the open fields.  It is whipping across the valley from Fryeburg.  Face the Winds seems to be most appropriate this week.  Most of the rain we got soaked in and the winds are so drying the fire danger will be up in no time.

where did it go?

I built this cairn years ago.  It makes me incredibly happy.  The cairn sometimes feels gravity.  All of the stones fall or part fall and I put them back in place.  

The stone on top is black, smooth and a bit curved.  

It feels good in my hand.  
It often slides off. 

 I pick it up and put it back  This has been going on for years on a regular basis.   I can spot that stone missing from the house. I wander out pick it up and put it back.

This fall it want missing.  Poof gone...did the fairies reclaim it?  It is hiding right in view?   I have raked and gotten down on my hands and knees searching for it.  

I searched for it last fall.  I tried once again today.  

I do not see it.  It is not there.  

I have given the place of honor at the top to a new stone.  This one is red, rough and straight.  

Doesn't feel so good in my hand 

yet it is a very handsome stone indeed.  

AND and it has already slid off.  

Letting go of anything, understanding 

why things change is not so easy.  

I was content with the status quo of my familiar black stone.  I may never know the why of it leaving.  

I am learning  the lesson of accepting 
that it has gone to another place.  

the beginning or the end

This is a remarkable time.  To me and many primitive cultures this year, 2012 seems a pivotal year.  Seems as if all that is or was familiar is shifting and while uncomfortable and out of our control, it is an amazing time to be alive. 
I have a little book in the bathroom written by a really cool priest Edward Hays who while Catholic doesn't buy into all the catholic and who blends Zen and Native American and all philosophies into reflections.  I don't read him every day.  This morning I picked it up opened at random and looks what I found.

March 22
the end times or the beginning

The brillant Jesuit theologian and paleontologist, Teihard de Chardin, who died in 1955 wrote years before his death "Once upon a time everything seemed fixed and solid.  Now everything in the universe has begun to slide under our feet."
Amazing. If this insightful visionary sensed the universe was shifting under his feet in the relatively calm times in the middle of the last century, would he describe what is happening now as an earthquake?  For Teihard de Chardin this cosmic displacement was not some apolocalyptic collapse of the once stable realities.  It was rather a beginning breakthrough birthing of an ever-evolving creation that requires frequent upheavals of the fixed status quo.

Banish any temptation to judge
these evil times as a breakdown,
for they are breakthrough times
of promise arising out of chaos.

As unstable as these times seem, 

there is something remarkable

 about being a part of all this.

magic in the night

Last night Venus was right above the crescent moon.  

It was a treat as we have had overcast rainy skies for days and suddenly there was clearing just at bedtime.  I am a bit challenged with the night sky and what is what and when.    How important is it for me to know the names,and paths?  AND Who decided  so long ago, that this is a bear and that a warrior?    Perhaps it would help if I, like the early man, lived outside under the sky learning the sky.    

Then my other problem with the sky is the numbers, millions of light years away and the star I see tonight might not even exist any more.  That is too big for my head to grasp.  

What is important is to enjoy and be grateful for the beauty of the night.  

Since I seem to spend so much time awake at night

 it is awesome to enjoy the magic and company of the skies.  

morning lights

salute

Each and every dog is special and each of mine has brought joy, love, laughs.  

Here is a salute to Shunka Wakan (dog - horse) on his special day. 4 years.  

He is now really becoming himself.    He has been the most challenging and the one with the most depth.  Smart, afraid,  hard, yet incredibly sensitive--- what a mix.  I asked for independent and got it in spades.  He is not the dog that most side up to, not the easiest dog, but what a sweet baby he is.  He would be way pissed to hear that said. He prefers the macho image.

  

wants and needs

I want a red drainboard. 

I have a perfectly good black one.  I saw a red one, liked it and feel a need.  It is not a real need.  It is a want.  That is our downfall this want vs. need.  Needs are pretty basic, shelter, food, friends.  Wants are those pretty, really unnecessary things that we trip over in ads, in stores, at friends homes.  Oh I want that!  What will I use it for.  I am finding if I sit still long enough my want goes away.  Needs don't go away. They can't as they are needed for something.   I need toilet paper, dog food, a bed for company, a bra to replace the tired worn out one I have.  Red drainboard is one of those red herrings that call me, BUT it is so not needed.  What I really "need" is a good sink with a sideboard which doesn't seems to fit my life right now. It is what I should have put in when building.  I didn't.
People seem to keep caught up in the want/need battle and house and storage building are full of wants.  things that people are not using, but are clung to because they hold memories, or are valuable or are cute or will be used someday.  It is hard to cut our ties with all this stuff.  
I look at people who are caught up in war and have to leave with the clothes on their back and what they can carry.  What is needed is what you carry. What would you choose.  Bet it would not be the red drainboard.

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; 

they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.

- Marcel Proust -

easter in the fields

This is early April and today Easter and picture is one of our lower fields.  So what is so special about all of this?  In a normal year the dogs and I could not walk the field, Tim and John would not be cutting wood down here because this would all be under water.  In spring at this time this field would be deep in snow or flooded deep enough we would be kayaking, not walking these fields.  It means  we have had a strange low snow winter.  It means we are going into spring with low water table which is not good.  This may not be a first for this to have happened.  It is the first time for us in our years here.  It feels not right.  Used to be one would just say this is an off year.  With all the strange weather one wonders if this is the new norm.

mouse traps

I have been researching mousetraps as I have a something in my dome eating my seedlings.  Seems to prefer flowers, tomatoes and spinach and it is not making me a happy camper.  Well this morning as I was opening the door to let the cats out I realized I own mousetraps.  They have 4 feet and are furry and underemployed.  tonight they shall spend the night in the dome.  If they are good at their job they will have tasty mice.  Now these cats Wooly and Wilde catch things outside, but are they good at inside work?  Wooly is a Hunter, fast and seems to really enjoy the chase.  Wilde on the other hand is not so.  

Wooly in hunting mode!




Wilde -  not so

leave no trace~

No TRACE ~ this is what we think when we walk in wild places.  

What about in our yard, our fields? I have left huge holes in the landscape by thinning trees and making trails, putting in buildings, digging wells, septic, moving stones and rocks.  
Planting gardens is not natural. I bring in seeds that would never live here and plant them.  

I follow the same trails when I walk or worse mow trails.  TRACE!  Holy, I have have left an impact that is not only embarrassing, 
but hurtful, harmful.  

I feel I am green but how can I be with this sort of impact. 

My car, the tractor on the drive and in the fields leave tracks not mere traces.    

What pray tell is the difference between the wild and the yard?   What gives me the right to impact the landscape with my presence in such a way?  Who made me god?  

When I step on moss which is alive, I hurt it.  When we mow are we improving the land?  If Mother nature were in charge what would our field look like?  

Here is the major question.  Would the animals and birds and frogs be happier with the wildness, without our impact? Yet I know the deer, follow the trails I make.  Is a little impact good? We as humans feel we are so wise, we know it all.

When I decide to kill a tree to "improve the view", I am seriously playing god.  

What right have I to decide that?
As stewards of the earth are we to make an impact "take care" of the earth
 and how big an impact? 

Leave no trace.  We are a guest here on this earth.  

Would I be so rude in someone's home jumping in to "improve" it.

getting our footing....

Thanks to Jordan of the Yurt there is now a firm gorgeous foundation on the east side of the yurt.  The west side is open for firewood.  

One might note that those are no little light weight rocks.  Ms. J moved them with a wheelbarrow from a distance.   Maine does not lack rocks. Getting them organized is no little feat.

When one looks at our rock walls one appreciates the sweat equity involved.