December 11, 2015 - A Menacing Orchard

It was a very foggy day today, which is common on the coast of Maine but not in December.  Fog has the ability to blur the line between the seen and the unseen.  Usually the demarcation is strict and solid, but when it’s foggy, the line shifts and forgets where it’s supposed to be.  Today was one of those days, and because today is in the dark half of the year, the feeling was especially intense.

I headed off to the old apple orchard because I knew that if I were going to find something not quite of this world, that would be the place to find it.  Oh, in the spring this place is full of greenery and pretty pink little flowers with petals drifting everywhere like a dream.  And I can’t tell you how much of a lie that is because the apple trees know darn well what they are and what is revealed in the dark half of the year.

The old apple trees, not so pretty now.

I have warned of the apple trees several times in this journal.  Do you remember when I told you about the old farm hand?  Please reread it if you do not recall.  It just may save your life someday.  In any event, the apple trees were once again very menacing.  If you have never been to an apple orchard in the winter--if you have only been in the spring, summer, and fall when the air is festive and the trees are benign--then you are in for a surprise. 

If any tree can think and reason like a human, it’s the apple tree.  If any tree can plot and plan like a human, again it’s the apple tree.  And I swear that at this time of year they can even uproot and move about in the darkened fields.  Usually it happens during the night so we don’t see it, but on this day of fog, the apple trees were especially mobile and bold.  Arrogant, actually.  They were arrogant.  Bolstered by the darkness and the fog, they came right up to the road.

Look between the two trees on the right.  Can see a third tree running between the two?  It was actually in the middle of the photo when I tried to take this picture, but it ran before I had the chance to capture it.  Then the tree on the right became very menacing.  Can you see the earth uprooted all around it?  It is because it began to move.  Closer.

I realized it was time for me to go or I would end up as one of the unsuspecting travelers.  Even though my heart is honest and true, I did not want to risk being in the clutches of those bony fingers.

December 10, 2015 - Gnomes

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see a gnome walking by just now.  It’s a gnomey time of year.  Spring and summer?  No way.  But late fall and early winter?  Oh, yes.  And you know, it wouldn’t even be that shocking!  They seem to like this time of year, this time of death and decay.  They are concerned with a different kind of growth.

The spring and summer greens are long since gone.  They give off a bright and shiny kind of energy.  You can feel it all around you.  The secret storage of the sun’s energy into the green plants is perhaps not as much a secret as the plants would like to think.  It’s a veritable pulsation.  They ooze the sun’s energy everywhere, and it can be easily palpated.  But they’re gone now.

Gnomes among the mushrooms on my road.

Now we have a different kind of growth, a growth based on death, strange as it seems.  Things have died all around us, and the world has turned to brown and will eventually turn to a dull grey.  The hidden stored energy of the sun is much harder to find now, but it is not so difficult to find the hardworking and hidden elementals who break the energy down and disperse it.  They are downright bold now.

They come with a strange and sweet and earthy scent to the air.  Things are crumbling now, and you can smell the crumbling.  If you rub your fingers--thumb to index and middle finger--you can almost feel the crumbly Earth on your fingertips.  And everything feels damp and moist.  This is not a life of sunshine but one of darkness, sweet and intoxicating.

The alchemist Paracelsus spoke of the gnomes.  He knew of the Earth dwellers.  He said that they were beings who existed in a world between mankind and the spirit world, and hence they contained some of each world.  Living in caves or within the Earth itself, the gnomes work with crystals, minerals, rocks, and gems--and, of course, the bones of humans.  This is the time of year when you “feel the weather in your bones.”  It might behoove you to make friends with them.

Traveling among the mushrooms, the gnome in this photo wears his coat of leaves pulled tightly up around him.  His vibrations are so similar to those of the Earth that he can easily pass right through it, and in fact, that is exactly what he did.

December 9, 2015 - The First Day

I imagine that this is what the very first day looked like.  The sun, fighting its way through a heavy atmosphere and massive clouds, begins to burst through upon a cold, dark, and grey Earth.  A river is waiting to greet the sun and reflect his beauty back into his own eyes.  Dazzled by his own brilliance, the Sun falls in love with his own reflection, delighted that he is no longer alone.  The River, being able to see for the first time ever, falls in love with he who gave her eyes to see.  Together they become the "I am."

The first day.

When I look out upon a scene like this, so common and ordinary in Maine, I receive that instantaneous flash, that instantaneous knowing.  I know I have been here before, thousands and thousands of times (perhaps millions).  Long before this lifetime, I was here at this spot, and if you have the “flash” upon seeing this, you were here, too.  Long after this lifetime, I will be here at this spot, and you will be, too.  This is reality, and everything else in my world is just part of the current dream I’m in.

Everything that was bothering me only moments ago seems to drift off.  My problems have no reality anymore, and I realize they never did.  Oh, I will head for home and the problems of my current dream will still be there, but they are not enduring.  They weren’t there in the beginning like you and I were with the sun and the river.  They didn’t see the first embrace of the light and the land, so how important could they be?  They’re just stories made to fill up the time until we come back to the river again and witness the beginning.

(This is The Muddy River in Topsham.  It’s only about 4 miles long and empties into Merrymeeting Bay.  It’s more tidal than anything else, really.  Not many people come here, but I do.  Perhaps you do, too.)

                                                                                       

December 8, 2015 - Ice Monsters

ICE MONSTERS

Ice monsters crossing the land

dragging their huge bodies

playing ice games

fighting in ice wars

hurling icebergs the size of cities

embracing the fierce cold.

Ice giants of old

gods of the far north

creeping out of their lair

raging across the land

scraping all life away

to start anew.

Old mountains destroyed

and new mountains built

sheets of solid rock

blown around like dandelion seeds

landing tenderly

Deposited by the glaciers of the last ice age.

December 7, 2015 - Reaching for the Light

Trying to look at the light through all the branches and twigs and brambles is hard, but it keeps tugging at me, commanding me.  I try to turn away, but it makes me look at it again and again.  It won’t leave me alone.  There are so many obstructions in the way of the light.  They look like barbed wire, holding me out or holding the sun in--I’m not sure which one.  I’m not sure if it matters.  But they’re a menace as they try to block the light.

Reaching for the light.

It’s so simple, really.  Just go to the light.  Go to the goodness.  But the branches!  The twigs!  The brambles and thorns!  They stand in my way.  I can't!  Yet the light seems to pass right around them or through them--again, it doesn’t matter which.  The fact is that they pose no barrier to the light.  It breaks right through those seeming barriers and comes straight for me.  In the silence, I hear a voice in my mind telling me that the obstructions are a mirage. 

Pass right through them, it tells me.

“But I am not the sun,” I say.

Are you not?

“No.”

The path goes both ways.  Try again.

December 6, 2015 - A Secret House

One of the things I love about this time of year is that there are no leaves or greenery to hide things.  So you either have to be extra careful (if you’re trying to hide something) or once-hidden things become temporarily revealed.  When the spring comes and the trees leaf out again and the grasses grow, that which was revealed becomes hidden once more.

No matter how often I travel in an area, there are always “new” things being revealed to me at this time of year--new to me, at least.  How many times have I been in this wooded area?  I can’t even count, but today I saw a “revealed” house that I have never seen before.  I took the photo on the highest zoom lens, so this is as good as I could get it.

A hidden and secret house.

The first thing you’ll notice is that this is a very old house, which means it has been here much longer than me but for some reason I never saw it before.  The windows are the old kind with several individual panes.  The main part of the house has a chimney on either side, although one side is just about hidden by the trees.  A nice woodstove and a couple of fireplaces kept it warm in the winter way back when (and most likely still do).

To the left, you’ll see that an addition with two gabled windows was built on sometime later after the original house.  That portion of the house seems almost sunken in when you look at the photo, but the house was up on a hill and I was below, craning my neck to see what I could see.

If you look all along the length of the house, you will see a tremendous amount of split and stacked firewood.  The rows are quite high and almost cover the first floor of the house.  Someone has planned on being very warm over this winter and obviously heats exclusively with wood.  I lived that way myself for many years, and it’s a fine way to live and stay warm in the winter.

I wonder how many people know about this place.  My guess is not many.  I’m not sure how I could have missed it all these years, but I did.  In fact, I almost missed it this time around, but a reflection glinting off the windows caught my eyes.  Hiding in plain sight is this marvelous house, and no one knows about it.

Of course, the writer in me instantly creates a story . . . about the owner of the house.  It’s the original owner, the one who built it a couple of hundred years ago.  He’s still living there.  You see, he has everything he needs in the woods, and so he never has a need to come out.  He doesn’t realize that the world has moved on.  Just as the world cannot see him, he cannot see the world.  And I expect he lost his calendar long ago and he doesn’t know what year it is and he doesn’t care . . .  There’s plenty of wood to keep warm and lots of animals for hunting and trapping.  We mustn’t tell him otherwise.  Not that he would believe us.

December 5, 2015 - A Bridge

Spanning a large distance or small, the bridge is that one thing that brings us from here to there and back again.  We could find another way to cross over.  Maybe.  But would we?  The bridge is the connector.  It’s such a small thing to make crossing and joining easier.  Crossing the pond, crossing the road, crossing the great divide.  Without it, we’re lost.

I found a way to bridge the subject.

This will provide a bridge to her new lifestyle.

He navigated the ship from the bridge.

We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

If you want to fix that relationship, you need to start building a bridge.

She has the ability to bridge from the physical to the spiritual.

He built a bridge between the two philosophies.

Don’t burn your bridges as you may need to cross them again.

Forget about it.  That’s water under the bridge.

Have faith in me as I will bridge these difficulties.

There is still hope; the bridge has not yet been taken.

Such a useful thing, a bridge.

Take the bridge.

December 4, 2015 - The Old Cemetery

Meanwhile, in another old cemetery in Maine, the Earth is pocked with lichen-covered tombstones.  This boneyard is not as orderly and cared for as the one I visited yesterday.  An old stone wall lines only a portion of the back, then drops off and crumbles into nothing.  It is the crumbling of the stone that stays ever in my mind, crumbling and crumbling.  There is no separation between the designated area for the dead and the forest behind it.  And the animals know it.

“Order!  We must have order!” screams the old undertaker as he stands at the entrance of the boneyard.  There was no one to take him under when he passed, as he did for so many others, and hence he stands at the entrance centuries later, still directing the dead.  A measuring stick is held firmly in his bony claw as he measures each member for their last dance.

Bonehenge.

The living tried to organize the place.  “We shall put these headstones all in a row,” they said.  “Let us make tight and orderly lines!”  Grave after grave, they did their best to make order out of chaos.  Each time, the order fell quickly into ruin because the dead are not known for staying put.  And so in different parts of the old cemetery, you can see where an attempt at order was made, only to be foiled once again.

Like a macabre version of Stonehenge, the tombstones shift and dance around their blackened ballroom, the order long since forgotten and the Earth shifting slowly to the music.  Stones fall over and some wear down to tiny nubs, the only markers of the passing of yet another person.  The historians do not visit this place as they visit Stonehenge.  If they were to do so, would they make the same assumption?  “It is a place of religion, of ritual, of sacrifice.  It is a stone calendar marking the equinoxes.”  What might they say of the dancing stones in this old cemetery?

One of the tombstones has a hand pointing upward, and the engraving says, “Yonder is my home.”  The cemetery gives us religion.  Another group of stones line up tall and straight like the Revolutionary War soldiers whose graves they cover.  The cemetery gives us ritual.  The smaller stones mark the passing of children who might not have died had there been antibiotics back then.  The cemetery gives us sacrifice.  The sun hits the headstones and the shadows slant long and point to the hidden comings and goings in the forest behind the dark ballroom.  The cemetery gives us the calendar.

“Order!  We must have order!” the undertaker screams again.  Somewhere a band strikes up an old waltz in an effort to bring the dancers of the dark ballroom back into line.  The stones dance slowly, ever so slowly over the years.  Decades pass, and then centuries come and go.  Eventually, the stones wear down to nothing and blow away into the wind, and order is at last reestablished, the landscape clear again and waiting for the next dance.

Yonder is my home.

December 3, 2015 - Good Fences

This fence is over 250 years old.  It was around before our nation was a nation.  Back then, we settlers were all English and were loyal to the crown.  This is part of the fence that surrounds the Old Harpswell Common Burying Ground and the old Meetinghouse. 

A good fence.

 

As fences go, it’s not half bad.  It has survived over 250 Maine winters on the coast, and that’s saying something.  Two hundred and fifty subzero winters with many feet of snow and ice . . .  It has survived torrential downpours and hurricanes.  The shifting of the Earth is its biggest challenge, and it has been jumbled a bit, but still those rocks are poised and ready to take more.  They still continue to define the old boneyard.

The ghosts are another matter.  I’m not sure how well they obey the boundary, but my feeling is that they appreciate it as a solid marker.  It defines their territory.  They come and go as they please, of course, but they notice that the living do not do the same.  Frankly, I think it’s a relief to them.  It was Robert Frost who said, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Living men put this fence together.  In those days, they were loyal to the English crown.  They had no idea that a couple of decades after they built it, they’d be taking part in a revolution to create a new country.  Many of those same men, along with their wives and children, are now buried within the confines of the very fence they built.  A man must have a solid home, after all.