Walking Meditation #1
A meditative hour walking through the woods. Walking slowly, then stopping, looking, staying for a while, and quietly moving on. The poet Wendell Berry writes: Ask the world to reveal…
Chickens, 20 Days Old; Tomato Starts; and a New Moon
The chickens are growing so fast! Paula has named 5 of the 6 pullets: Amelia, Rhoda (Rhode Island Red), Lilly... She's been spending more time with them than I have,…
Spring Notes
The other night, at dusk, Paula and I were walking down the lane along the deep ravine, coming back from the back pasture, and a barred owl flew past and…
A Week in Early Spring 2013
Snow. And fire in the Buckstove. And Spring Peepers talking at night. Video of peepers' chorus coming sometime soon. I love — we, Paula and I — love this land.…
Spring Chicks
Today we got our first chickens — one of each: Barred Rock, Silver-laced Wyandotte, Red Rock, Red Production, Buff Orpington, and an Americana. They are five days old and currently…
Planting Peas, and Spring Peepers
The ground was probably too wet to till the garden, but we did because it was time to plant peas. And this is the first Spring we have experienced on…
The Ground Beneath Our Feet
The ground beneath our feet keeps changing, keeps pace with the seasons, and now Spring is in the air. The return of birdsong in the morning; the call of a…
Five Puddles
In the Dominican Republic years ago, Paula and I slid down a series of "twenty-seven puddles" on a guided tour through the stone formations that a stream had created in…
Notes on the Winter Solstice 2012
The celestial pendulum swings back now, back toward more sunlight, longer days and shorter nights. More sunlight slowly creeps into the sky again. Next summer seems possible. I finished Christmas…
I Wonder at the Details
Details matter. As the winter season comes on, greens dissolve into brown, gray, shades of tan, ocher, you name it. Vibrant color fades so quickly. And we are left with…
Bones in the Woods
With the leaves off the trees now, we hike more easily through the woods, and bones are more noticeable: white marks among the brown leaves.
Redtail Hawk on a Gray November Morning
A mature redtail hawk flew over to investigate me on a gray November morning. She landed on the utility light pole and kept watching the grass in the pasture and…
A Good View of an Immature Hawk
Yesterday, on a crisp sunny Sunday morning, we heard a hawk calling in the woods by the ravine. Here are a few pics of my attempt to get as close…
The Necessity of Cutting Wood to Burn for the Winter
We're cutting wood to burn in the stove for the winter, and there's a kind of quiet urgency to the task, it seems. It's getting cold, and windy, and the…
Crows in Flight
Perhaps it's the time of the year, but the crows have become so active and animated here. They have been chasing hawks. They gather in groups ("murders") and feed on…
Cutting Wood for the Old Buckstove
It's fall now, with cooler temperatures at night — down to the mid-30s last night, the first warning of frost — and we're using the old wood-burning Buckstove insert that…
Eating the Giant Puffball
Four inches of rain came down in the last two days, the remnants of Hurricane Isaac, and in the woods several large, alien-looking, egg-like mushrooms appeared — the giant puffball…
The Surface of Mystery
In Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Annie Dillard says: “Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of…