Sunny Hours

Before I started walking slowly with a camera, purposely paying attention to the world, one step at a time, I could not even imagine all the tiny miracles, those I missed seeing (in my own childhood yard, for example, with rocks, and trees, and flowers (wild and not), and creek, and caves, and forest) without knowing I was missing them, walking by, hurrying by, not taking time to suspend the hurry and the step to look, really look, but when I did slow up and start to look and listen, I noticed things that shot me right back to college, not to zoology or botany or geology, but to art history where learning to see what one looked at opened whole worlds of possibility, like architectural ornamentation, which brings me to this: circular forms, one man made (which, thinking it might be special, sent me to the internet only to discover that it's a cliched one of millions) and one natural (which surely a friend has identified and cataloged, but remains unidentified to me, even with his superior photos). 

I shall simply enjoy both and note their echoes of one another.

Fall Color ABCedarian: K

KOMBU GREEN

Fall Color ABCedarian: F

FOREST GREEN, FALLOW, FIELD DRAB

The Shrine of Old Wood

I would
worship wood,
the way it weathers,
undulates, puckers,
nurtures lichen.

Gimme Shelter

A white sheet in a forest is an invitation to forego a lake stroll for a woods walk. 

What had seemed mysterious from the parking lot grew even more so as I approached. A lean-to or lean-on a stable tree and a fallen tree, the shelter floats like an upside down ribbed hull of an ancient boat, gathered limbs growing in size as they near the mouth of the trunk-cave. 

It's beautiful, I thought, as I approached, cautiously at first, then not so cautiously when I saw how sturdily it had been "constructed." Every limb and branch wore fungi and lichen like honor badges or ornaments, some black, others orange, still others bright green.

 The folks who built this are clever, I thought, like the young stone sculptor at Abbo's Alley. They have made an object of beauty. 

And then I saw the garbage: the fire pit with crushed and burned glass and beer cans and bottles, the empties inside, many others half-burned and strewn into leaves just beyond. 

Could the same folks who built this have also been so careless, so disrespectful?

I hope not.

And I am glad it has been a wet week.

Poetry Man

I was bent over a bench shooting lichen when I heard a harmonica. Not a bluesy-get-down-and-dirty blow, but a happy rolicking set of runs.

I couldn't resist. I moved further down the path toward the music, which had morphed into whistling. By the time I reached the fish pond (which had angered me earlier because of the rocks and beer cans stranded on the ice), a strumming banjo accompanied the whistling. 

I imagined whom I might see, and I wasn't disappointed. "Hi!" 

"Hello, ma'am. Beautiful afternoon, isn't it?"

I agreed. "Your dog is so focused. Perfectly calm and obedient."

"He's a good dog," the young man answered. He nodded toward the good dog, and the little pom-poms on his knitted cap bobbed.

"You've sure found the perfect spot," I said and snapped his picture.

"Oh yes, ma'am. You have a great weekend!" 

"I shall," I said, and wandered on, nodding to the whistling and strumming in the background.

It has already started with a bit of Sewanee magic, I thought.

Two Trees

Outside one, lichen like peeling paint or Italian ice cream -- saffron, tangerine, pastel lime, soft teal, dark purple starbursts -- liven one trunk in mostly empty woods.

Inside another, multicolored lady beetles and spiders make their homes, the interior glowing like otherworldly northern lights undulating in southern wood.






Every day walking: it's a good thing.