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March 17, 2005
A Lion on the Lam
Brezen
Jaroslav SeifertPozdravte jeste jednou zimu,
Sklonte se k snehu tajicimu.
Kus jara uz k nam padlo z vysek:
Podleska, modry vetrnicek.Otvira ocka jeste spici,
Jako kdyz dite na polstari
V den jiz se rozednivajici
Diva se po matcine tvari.A ta, jez nemuze se vynadivat,
Musi se smat a pocne zpivat.
MarchWelcome once more the winter,
and gently kneel beside the melting snow.
There, sent from the heavens, a herald of spring:
Delicate petals of yellow and blue unfurl.A drowsy spring flutters open wide eyes,
like a child resting on a pillow at dawn,
searching for his mother’s gentle face.And she cannot take her eyes from him;
Smiling, she begins to sing.
Thanks to my mom for collaborating with me on this translation. Also, please forgive the absence of diacritics in the Czech and any liberties taken with the translation.
It seems as though the snow has been falling steadily for days. On my morning ski eastward toward the dawn, large flakes hung suspended, gently shepherded downward by unseen currents of a late winter breeze -- they appeared as constellations against their lightening universe of fir, spruce, and pine.
I am reluctant to let winter go.
The vernal equinox arrives in less than a week, though spring will not begin to green the fallow fields across the road until nearly May, and snow will line the higher ridges until June. But, much as the snow-laden boughs of balsam fir spring upward when they slough off their snowy vestments in these longer days, the season will as well release me into the warm colors of spring.
Orion has been outside more these days and has noticed the brilliance -- and warmth -- of the sun overhead. Today, he complained only when I shaded his eyes, wanting to feel sun on skin, which he has done far too little in his short life. He pushed back from my chest and looked wide-eyed around the woods, maybe listening, like I was, for the melodic drip of sap into bucket from each of the school's forty spiles. None yet today, but of course, it's still winter.
Posted by pavel at 8:50 PM | Comments (1)
March 13, 2005
A Conscious Stillness
This present moment
that lives on
to become
long ago
Gary Snyder, from "One Day in Late Summer"
This morning I found myself circling a tree -- a mountain ash -- slowly counterclockwise, like a dog that has treed a squirrel and follows its spiraling, chirping form vainly round and round. As my snowshoes punctuated the silence with a resounding whompf in the deep new snow, my search was for the lingering voice of last night's storm, for the tall, narrow line of white etched into the shallow furrows of the bark that adds a verse to the poetry left by the storm's wind. In the memory of trees, the storm continues to rage.
In this morning's post-storm hush, the only movement is that of the sun, slipping above its refuge behind the mountain range to the east, and playing hide-and-seek with the smooth lenticular cloud suspended in the lee of the north woods' highest summits -- the cloud itself a visible echo of the wind that has left our own hilltop scoured and reshaped.
I am drawn inward by Orion's long, quiet, seemingly thoughtful moments looking out at the cold world through our windows -- the brilliance of sunlit white framed by our shadowed interior appealing to his love of contrast.
These times of mindful stillness I would not exchange for all the strength and dance of the wind that I know already I will long for in later years when the house is filled with the joyful din of a growing child. For now, I cherish these reflective, quiet moments that erase any moments of frenetic frustration from earlier in the day. Watching the sun complete its arc behind illuminated firs with Orion on my lap steadies me for whatever may come next. Sitting snugly in my lap, his hands moving slowly, limning the outlines of thoughts he has yet to make conscious, and calming any whorls of worry -- the memory of any storm forgotten in the conscious stillness we share.
Posted by pavel at 7:09 AM | Comments (3)
March 10, 2005
Wind
Winds are advertisements of all they touch, however much or little we may be able to read them; telling their wanderings even by their scents alone. . . . Most people like to look at mountain rivers, and bear them in mind; but few care to look at the winds, though far more beautiful and sublime, and though they become at times about as visible as flowing water.
John Muir, from "A Wind-Storm in the Forests"
In everything there is the wind. In a quiet moment today, I could not help but think of the wind; the only sounds were the rattling of our old farmhouse's windows in their frames and the sweep of uneasy wind and downy flake springing the snow-laden boughs of the cedar tree outside. Orion was snug against his mother, the two of them guarding each another from swirling gusts of different sorts.
Drift is much too passive a word for the piles of snow that persistently press against our front door, presenting me with a sculpted mountainscape when I stepped across the threshold for my morning walk.
The shifting identity of place is at the whim of this late winter storm. The wind reshapes yesterday's landscape into strata -- though ephemeral -- of wind-packed crystals, each layer unique in its color, weight, and feel. I dig through the layers to find the solid earth beneath, an unyielding mat of yellowed grass nearly two feet through fine snow that sifts like sand coaxed by the day's incessant gusts back into the hole.
Orion is only as old as this winter, and with spring's arrival in less than two weeks, we will begin to add yet another layer to the shifting record of this new life. I think that for now, at least, Orion is content with winter. He is already no stranger to the cold; in the height of the storm, as we made the short walk to school for class, Orion insisted on pushing back from my chest and gazed intently up into the falling flakes. I nearly walked off the path as I looked at him looking at the snow. Flakes would flit across his cheeks and lips, and rather than complain, he almost seemed to smile at the snow, the wind, the winter that will forever be his season.
Posted by pavel at 12:13 PM | Comments (1)
March 7, 2005
Straighter Darker Trees
This village is forgotten by the whole world. Buried in the snow, with more snow and more snow, nobody comes here.
Carl Wilmore, from a 1916 interview with Robert Frost in Franconia, NH
Late Wednesday afternoon, as Jen, Orion, and I drove to the eastern side of the mountains for my slide show, snow was still flying across the road, shepherded by persistent gusts into drifts that seemed to grow higher even as we watched from behind the windshield. As I coaxed the car a bit farther north, we crossed into Coos County, part of the Grand Bois du Nord, which runs unimpeded to our state's border with Canada a few hours' to the north. Against a gray dusk canvas, spires of balsam fir punctuated the forest canopy, their green tinted nearly black in the waning light. From behind the dashboard glow, the trees gathered in the near darkness, sentinels of the wilds beyond the headlights.
The following evening, a friend and I skied on the trails across the road from our house, making wide loops through a shadowy wood. At our circle's farthest point, we crested the top of a hill, which had once been cleared for timber and was now left for sale (an all too typical pattern here). The old woods road we skied on was defined more by its dense border of blackberry than any vestigial track, though this certainly once was (and will again perhaps be) someone's road home.
Like the memory of this place, the sun, too, had not yet slipped behind the western ridge, and, climbing back up the hill, I was guided by a single mature birch left to blaze in the sun, its upper branches now painted gold and holding steadfast in the rising evening wind. Beneath the tree's spread arms, a sculpted sastrugi landscape of canyons, ridges, and layered shadows of violet beside iridescent peaks of orange flame.
Too often it seems, I find myself speeding by legions of pointed firs at dusk, great swaths of darkness with nary a sun-flecked hill in sight. My solace is in the details of the world, and I find that even in a week of continuing transition, with Jen and I both at work, and my new class starting tomorrow, although the encircling pointed firs can confound and even frighten, the flames of light--a run at sunrise, a moment in the fleeting gloaming of alpenglow, at least momentarily quell my worries and spread a circle of warmth like Orion's smile at waking.
We walked in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so softly and serenely bright—I thought I had never bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman, driving us home at evening.So we saunter toward the Holy Land; till one day the sun shall shine more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening light...
Posted by pavel at 7:02 PM | Comments (6)