the wind
like an ocean
crashes against my door
rattling the timbers
of this anchored ship
amidst a sea of snow
(new years day, 2013, kelly salasin)
Category: Winter
The Moon Appears…
Tonight’s Snow Moon is so spectacular that even after an egregiously long day at work, I must share an excerpt from the equally spectacular 2012 Earth Story Calendar by local creative, Peter Adair.
The February page of his calendar opens with these show stopping words:
Earth Adopts a Child: The Moon Appears
I’ve never met Peter, but I’m studying to be a yoga teacher with a friend of his, who gifted us this calendar.
I’m a gift lover so this was a nice surprise, but it wasn’t until February that the magic of it began to unfold.
While the art of January’s Supernova Event was stunning, it’s February’s Moon that drew me in. Like a ballad, the accompanying text sweeps me up into its story again and again.
According to Peter, it’s inspired by the work of a mathematical cosmologist (Geez, where do they go to school?) who is described as having a heart of a poet.
No kidding:
Soon after Earth’s formation, during a time when asteroids rain upon the fledgling solar system, a sizeable intruder strikes our globe in a sideswipe collision. From this shuddering meeting, a portion of Earth’s body spews into space. The interloper, its momentum reduced through the encounter, succumbs to Earth’s gravitational embrace and is received into orbit. There, it coalesces with the scattered material of Earth and becomes our Moon.
My gosh! Is it me or does that take your breath away?
But don’t stop there, it continues…
Earth’s daughter gradually slows our planet’s spin to its accustomed twenty-four hour rotation, establishes the axial tilt making possible the four seasons, and produces the caressing tides along shorelines that will become the fecund wombs of evolving life.
Who needs March when February makes you swoon;
and No, I haven’t looked ahead.
That’s taboo!
But how fortunate are we to live in such a place–
with such a daughter shining above us.
It wasn’t until I moved to Vermont that I began to truly notice the moon. Others taught me how. Women mostly. And now Peter, and his “ode to creation” in the Earth Story Calendar. I kind of feel bad for telling you about it because it looks like they’re sold out.
There’s always next year, and in the meantime, take a drink of that gorgeous daughter in the sky.
Kelly Salasin, Snow Moon, 2012
More from the Earth Story Calendar:
The scientific account of Earth’s formation and development is a story of vibrant creativity and stunning transformation. The journey begins within the fiery core of a star, and concludes (for now) with the emergence of a species able to comprehend its origin. We have learned that the unfolding of the human is interwoven with the unfolding of the planet. This is the theme of Earth Story calendar.
Retrospective Reluctance
Now that 2011 is behind us, I’d like to skip the retrospective and forget that there ever was a fire or a murder or a flood; But the stores are still closed on Main Street, and Michael Martin’s sister just posted on my blog, and MacArthur is not the road it once was.
I search on the internet and the find that the only thing new about Richard is my own writing on this blog. What’s happening? It’s been almost half a year. Wouldn’t it be convenient to imagine Richard never existed?
But then I think about the Martins. How are they moving forward? How important is the trial to them? When is the trial?
(I was just called for jury duty; but not for a criminal case–Thank God.)
Yesterday, I came upon a poem about being in prison. My son was home sick and asked if I’d read to him while he ate his soup. I picked up the book that I found at the Marlboro Book Swap last year, and blew off the dust. I had intended to read excerpts from A Call to Character on a regular basis, but the practice died long ago.
“Let’s find something about kindness,”I say.
My son smirks with embarrassment. Just a moment earlier he snapped at me in that sardonic “tween-age” fashion. In my best NVC, I let him know it stung. With his big heart, it pains him to know that he’s hurt me, even if he can’t help himself.
“Darn, there’s no section on Kindness, only Compassion” I say. “But you’ve got plenty of that.”
“Read anything,” he says, delighted to have me seated beside him all day.
I flip through the stories and plays and fables, and a poem catches my eye in the Self-discipline category. I begin reading… to myself.
“Read aloud,” my son begs.
“This one is about being in jail; I don’t think you’ll like it.”
“Read it,” he says; and so I proceed:
Advice to Those Who Will Serve Time in Prison
...To wait for letters inside, to sing sad songs, or to lie awake all night staring at the ceiling is sweet but dangerous. Look at your face from shave to shave, forget your age, watch out for lice and for spring nights, and always remember to eat every last piece of bread-- also, don't forget to laugh heartily. And who knows, the woman you love may stop loving you. Don't say it's no big thing: it's like the snapping of a green branch to the man inside. To think of roses and gardens inside is bad, to think of seas and mountains is good. Read and write without rest, and I also advise weaving and making mirrors. I mean, it's not that you can't pass ten or fifteen years inside and more-- you can, as long as the jewel on the left side of your chest doesn't lose its luster!(Nazim Hikmet)
Kelly Salasin, January 2012
ps. My apologies to those of you who clicked the link to MacArthur Rd above. I couldn’t help myself. That song won’t leave my mind today, especially as it rains on top of our long-awaited snow.
The Evergreen
We brought home the tree this past weekend–from the wind swept farm upon McKinley Hill in Jacksonville. I don’t know if it’s really called McKinley Hill, but those are the people for whom we remove our mittens to scribble stiffly: “twenty dollars and oo cents” in frozen ink each year.
We thought about waiting for more snow to lend more of the holiday feeling, but we opted for what we had, not knowing if the weather would offer more or take what little remains.
The sun was bright on the hill and the view spectacular, and so was the wind which made for little argument over which tree was best. (Even the new guy at the baler was surprised at how quickly we returned dragging a balsam behind us.)
It was such a tiny tree that it hardly needed shortening once home, but my husband took off a foot any way–with the chain saw–which my 16 year-old defended, “He’s a man. He has to use the most powerful tool available.”
At the farm, a simple hand-saw had been employed by our resident enthusiast: Eleven-year old Aidan who also pulled the tree carriage down the hill and just as enthusiastically dragged it back up while my husband loaded the evergreen onto our Civic.
I love seeing trees atop of cars. I like counting how many pass us in a day. This is not p.c. of me, I know; many of my rural friends feel compromised cutting down a Charlie Brown rut from their own woods, while others forgo the tradition altogether and hang ornaments from evergreen boughs.
This year I actually considered this, not with environmental consciousness, but with fatigue. I didn’t want to face the dramatic overhaul that is required in tiny living room to accommodate a tree; but this year’s choice was so trim–we only moved a single chair.
Our tradition is to leave the tree unadorned as long as possible to appreciate it for its simple gift of green. Next we add the lights, and these too are left twinkling in solitude to inspire us on dark nights.
The last step is to add the ornaments, unwrapped from their boxes, labeled with dates and gift bearers, and carefully placed upon the boughs for the right effect of color, shape, medium and reflection.
We add egg nog and festive finger foods to this occasion, and then do the same with the holiday leftovers when it comes time to pack up the ornaments after the holiday.
The tree itself remains, lit and then unlit, until I can finally bear parting with the Balsam beauty in favor of order and an extra chair.
The Christmas tree is one of my favorite traditions along with the advent calendar and a daily reading from National Wildlife’s, December Treasury. A tribute to the Evergreen is today’s offering:
The Ancients
One need not go into history to find the reasons for veneration of the evergreen tree or bough as part of the Christmas season. They are of the enduring things of this earth, and man has known them as long as man has been here. The pine, the spruce, the hemlock, the fir – all those conifers that know no leafless season – have been held in special favor when man would have symbols of life that outlast all winters. And even more enduring, in geologic time, are the ground pine, the ground cedar, and the club mosses, most venerable of all the evergreens.
We gather them now, even as the ancients gathered them reaching for the reassurance of enduring green life at the time of the winter solstice. For the pines and their whole family were old when the first man saw them. Millions of years old, even, even at a time when millions of years had no meaning. When we gather them we are reaching back, back into the deep recesses of time. But, even as the ancients, we are reaching for reassurance, for the beauty of the living green but also for that green itself, the green of life that outlasts the gray winds, the white frosts, and the glittering snow of winter.
So we bring in the pine, the spruce, the hemlock – and now, because of the cultivation of Christmas trees on a wide scale, we do so without desecrating the natural forest. We bring the festoons of ground pine and partridgeberry, feeling a kinship with enduring things. They help us to catch, if only briefly, that needed sense of hope and understandable eternity.
-Hal Borland
December Moon
The full moon of December is no summer serenader’s moon, no sentimental moon of silvery softness to match
the rhyming of the ballad singer.It is a winter’s moon with more than fourteen hours of darkness to rule in cold splendor.
It is not a silvery moon at all. This is a moon of ice, cold and distant. But it shimmers the hills where there is a frosting of snow, and it makes the frozen valleys gleam. It dances on the dark surface of an up-country pond.
It weaves fantastic patterns on the snow in the woodland. It is the sharp edge of the night wind, the silent feather of the great horned owl’s wing, the death-scream of unwary rabbit when the red fox has made its pounce.
This winter’ moon is a silent companion for the nightwalker, a deceptive light that challenges the eye. It dims the huddled hemlocks on the hillside and it sharpens the hilltop horizon. It wreathes the walker’s head in the shimmer of his own breath, and it seems to whistle in his footsteps. It makes wreaths of chimney smoke and sweetens the smell of the hearth fire.
It is the long winter night in cold splendor, night wrapped in frost, spangled and sequined and remote as Arcturus.
~Hal Borland (1900-1978), Twelve Moons of The Year, 1979
This Vermont Life 