Beyond the Fields We Know

What is it about these sunny days on the cusp of springtime? Yesterday every bridge in Perth held a few happy (if bemused) and slightly dazzled northerners, peering over the railings into the deep blueness and looking thoughtful. The blue of the river was so vibrant and intense that...

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Charlie, enjoying a few minutes of sunshine on the fence in front of the old log barn on a fine early March morning...You can't see it here, but the maple sap is running, and the syrup season is in full swing in the Lanark Highlands. The sugar house on...

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Here and there among the deep drifts of snow and ice, a single spruce or balsam fir lifts its head toward the sun, and its fresh blue-green tint and spicy fragrance are reminders that longer days and brighter times are just around the corner. Local conifers are never brighter or...

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You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your bodylove what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.Meanwhile the world goes on.Meanwhile the...

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I've just finished creating a series of blank note cards for a dear friend, an accomplished writer and a gifted correspondent with a wide circle of friends and an almost lifelong journaling practice, and it seems to me that it is high time I got back to handwritten "stuff" myself....

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This month's moon usually makes its appearance when it is icy cold in the north. This year for some reason, the night was mild, clouding up a little later and raining through the darkness and on into early morning.For me, this full moon has to be the Owl Moon,...

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Worlds great and small, worlds within and worlds without, and every one a wonder to behold and remember...Just when one decides that she is thoroughly weary of ice and snow and won't take a single photo more of such things, another winter scene presents itself to the eye. Small...

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Red-breasted Nuthatch(Sitta canadensis)...

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On a very cold day at the end of February, one wraps up and goes for a walk at twilight, touring carefully through streets, lanes, fields, parks and the village common with camera in hand. She is a little restless and in search of something, and she knows not...

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Notice each windowpane has a differentSwirling pattern of frost etched on the glass.And notice how slowly the sun meltsThe glaze. It is indelible: a fossil of a fern,Or a coelacanth, or a derelict whoRummages in his pockets and pulls out a fewApple cores. Notice the peculiarangle...

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Kordana (Poetry)...

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Daylight arrives a little earlier now, and sometimes there is already a blush of dawn showing on the horizon when I shake myself loose from the old quilt and trot (or lurch) out to the kitchen to make coffee, wrapping myself in an old shawl first to hold the early...

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A corner of the hill in Lanark, seen on a snowy morning, with next summer's fence posts and a few tufts of withered but very resilient tall white clover peering out of the snowdrifts.This study is a simple one - there are no tall trees, no rocks or hillside springs...

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High winds, blowing snow, an old road and bare trees...A friend poking through my portfolio recently called this scene desolate and described the trees as being barren. That is not how it seemed to me - I thought the place and the moment were atmospheric, magical and wonderfully...

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The amaryllis bulb was started at Yule, and it is a fond tradition of some years standing.One is always hoping for a riotous and impetuous blooming some time around the beginning of February, an exuberant floral happening to banish the darkness of winter and welcome back the light of...

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The word patience comes to us from the Middle English pacient and the Middle French patient, thence from the Latin word pati, meaning to undergo something, to suffer through or put up with something. Patience is a good word for one who aspires to authenticity or enlightenment, but it...

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(For Linda Foster)IBecause we used to have leavesand on damp daysour muscles feel a tug,painful now, from when rootspulled us into the groundand because our children believethey can fly, an instinct retainedfrom when the bones in our armswere shaped like zithers and brokeneatly under their feathersand because before we had...

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Looking down, the view resembled a wide flowing river with frothy rapids, billows, white-capped waves and even an island - the twigs poking out of the snow appeared to be a tall bare tree. It was (however) merely a little ice and snow and a few twigs. Looking...

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A massive old white pine on the hillside, she stands regally on the far perimeter of the Two Hundred Acre Wood, the first old friend I look for when we round the final bend before turning in at the gate.Tree's artfully curved form reminds me of a tall ship in...

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In the depths of winter, temperatures climbed above freezing for a day or two, and the little river on my hillside in the Lanark Highlands flowed freely for a few hours in the sharp unfiltered sunlight.The stream springs up from several hundred feet underground in the old granite of the...

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The word this week is vision, and the word comes to us through the good offices of the thirteenth century Middle English, thence from the Latin visio meaning seeing, or vidēre meaning to see.Certainly my northern world was a grand vision this morning, one that was blue and rich and...

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In the name of the daybreakand the eyelids of morningand the wayfaring moonand the night when it departs,I swear I will not dishonormy soul with hatred,but offer myself humblyas a guardian of nature,as a healer of misery,as a messenger of wonder,as an architect of peace.In the name of the sun...

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