October days ride seven horses
Finnish saying
The first snow of the season fell softly this morning, quietly and with no fuss.
By the time I got to the lower tower with jays squabbling all around me, the tide was out and the tower was swaying slightly in gusts of wind that followed on from the snow. The wind had alternated with hail and dazzling sun.
The top of the tower in the middle of the wetlands is level with the sraight growing pines' and birches' uppermost branches, maybe 36 or 40 feet up. The trees' tops are close enough to reach out to and today in the east wind they lean over right into the open tower.
The jays are constant in their bickering and only a solitary grey crow flies purposefully on his errand against this east wind. A finch hurtles by on a squall followed by a leaf of birch at almost the same speed. Five swans beat up and away, black in silhouette against the sun.
The sun kindles odd corners of the woodland now that the leaves are thinning, sending shafts to search the woodland floor, revealing silent citadels of wood-ants. Bullfinches flicker from floor to low branch seeking shelter; despite the snow and hail and the lip-cracking east wind and eyebright sun; despite cold biting nosebones and seeds hidden in leaf drifts, their fleeting brightness seems to light seeds in front of them and then over there and then elsewhere.
For me too, on low shrubs there's plenty of fraochans and enough lingonberries for my tongue to remember summer.
Snow makes the event; taste liberates the body's memory. Whatever it is that happens, it happens here.
The Celts call these "thin places", where the other side is so close the veil shivers your arms as you reach through. The First People traveled these sacred pieces of earth to think on things in presence of Creator. I know them as mountains. I see them with my spirit eyes, walk them with blood and bone legs. They teach clear bird song message, scolding squirrel lesson, bracing as clean water through moss. ()Paulette
ReplyDelete...and again after a long walk - your words made me hear this again - "so much is revealed after the leaves fall". Thank you. ()Paulette
ReplyDeleteSounds like the jays could have been in the boardroom on The Apprentice last night .... all that bickering etc!!
ReplyDeleteLiked the image of the out of control finch.
So is that the snow now on/lying for winter or will there be a thaw?
but slowly revealed, Paulette, eh?
ReplyDeleteThis time, Gordon, the snow didn't lie. There was more, but now it's crystal cold and frosty nights.
ReplyDeleteThin places I think of as the opposite - a thickening where the numinous teems.
ReplyDeleteThank you Paulette, for your words
A slow thickening reveals the wyrd ones. We are experiencing strange thickenings here, tempers are short... electricity in the air, aurora borealis and all manner of sparklings. We are taught not to whistle in the presence of the auroras because it makes them curious enough to descend and suck up your soul (the music). Any legends up your way? Paulette
ReplyDeleteMy sparkle is the everyday, the quotidien.
ReplyDeleteThe legends here also concern whistling; but sometimes do, sometimes don't whistle if you know what's good for you: storytellers' grace-notes maybe . . .