The snow piles at the edges of our driveway are now over my head.  My study, with its walls half-underground, has snow mid-way up its windows. Some days, this makes me feel warm and snug, like I’m in a grouse’s snow burrow; others, it makes me feel trapped. As New Englanders and Midwesterners alike will tell you, it is the winter of too much snow.

The snow is powdery soft and has drifted high in many places. It’s difficult to get to the bird feeder on the side of the house. I think about using snow shoes to get there because, in some places, the snow is well over my knees. There isn’t enough crust on it to support anything much heavier than a gray squirrel. I wonder what the larger animals are doing for food. One day, I see fox tracks in the driveway. Another, I catch a glimpse of unusual movement outside the front of our house as I walk down the stairs. Three deer are walking down the middle of our street – one doe and two youngsters, probably born last spring or summer. The youngsters have no spots, but they are smaller than their mother. Their heads are just – just – above the snow along the edges of the road. Somehow, they see me through the small window above the front door even as I immediately curtail my movements. They stop, their ears swiveling as they gaze towards the house. A car comes along, and they bound away, over the snowdrifts toward the pond, and then out of sight into the woods, following the cross-country ski tracks my neighbors have made.

After dinner out one evening, a medium-sized furry creature runs out in front of our car as we’re almost home. It’s a blur in the smeary salt-covered headlights and windshield. Fast. So fast. And, then, it, too, like the deer, leapt over the snowbanks on the side of the road and was gone. It wasn’t a dog. It appeared golden blonde in the lights. A bobcat, maybe. I know they’re around, though I haven’t seen one. I’m still puzzling over it when we get home, so very grateful that we didn’t hit whatever it was. I glance through the field guides I’ve spread out across the bed. I’m pretty sure I didn’t see any spots. It wasn’t a coyote. I don’t know how I know, but I do, and I’m positive. Hours later, I remember that I saw the animal’s tail clearly. It was full and bushy, held out straight behind its body. It was beautiful. It was a fox.

One blue and indigo moon-lit night, I can’t sleep. It’s around 2:00 a.m. I learned long ago that fighting sleeplessness is a waste of time. When you’re not afraid of not being able to sleep, the night world ceases to be so scary. When I lived alone, I’d wander through the house in the dark, usually ending up in my big blue chair, looking out over my sleeping street, my white dog glowing faintly in the dark, calmly resting at my feet. Now, I lie quietly, just resting, thinking. I hear a noise coming from a distance, one I haven’t heard in a long time. It’s a Great Horned Owl, hooting in the dark. The furnace comes on, and I can’t hear it for a moment, but, then, when the system shuts off, there the owl is, still. It’s a ways away, and the snow and ice combine to trick my ears about direction, but I hear it hooting on and off for a long time. There’s some kind of music there, and rhythm, too. I think it must be calling for a mate. We haven’t had owls around since I’ve lived here; maybe this one will stay.

Finally, the February thaw comes. The snow sags and settles. For a few days, it’s warmer, too warm, in fact. We play hooky in Harvard Square one afternoon, and we realize it’s almost 60 degrees. We wear lighter coats, and our gloves stay in our pockets. We walk down Mass Ave, talking to each other about the conflict we feel: the weather feels so nice, and, at the same time, there is no way that it’s normal. A day or so later, temperatures cool again, the melting spots become icy, and we can practically skate in our driveway. It isn’t exactly what we have in mind. The car-that-is-not-a-Subaru gets stuck in its parking spot. The temperature moderates, and the days hover right around freezing for awhile.

Two weeks ago, it snowed again after a break of some days. Though I’ve seen more than enough snow since the start of the year, it was the most beautiful snow yet. It was cold, in the low 20s. Large, distinct flakes stayed separate from one another as they nestled and accumulated on the trees, as well as on my car when I went out for a much needed visit with a friend. It wasn’t wet or heavy snow. It was pure lusciousness – the lightest of fluff.

And, then, rather suddenly, my roll-with-the-punches, being-unphased-by-the-weather, fairly good humor wavers then tilts. The news here at home and around the world is bad, then worse. I’m tiring of being cut off from the pond and its surrounds. The winter has been tough on my health. My asthma has been barely in check even when I stay inside. Outside, with the smoke from fireplaces and wood-burning stoves, smells I used to love, combining with the bitter cold, my lungs spasm, I feel a searing pain in my chest, and I can’t breathe. My head, touchy about the frequent changes in barometric pressure with all the storms, is in the midst of a migraine stew.

Last Friday, it snowed a little again. But then it rained. And sleeted. And then it rained some more. I saw a green tinge under the ice, close to the shore, where a tree grows half in, half out of the pond. While I know it’s too cold yet for anything much to be happening in that shallow, viscous sludge under there, something’s going to.

The car-that-is-not-a-Subaru is no longer stuck. We all cheer the Master of the Universe. I swear I hear a robin singing. The wren couple has been singing on and off for no particular reason for some time. A sparrow tries out its rusty voice.

Snow comes again on Sunday, and Michael shovels it without me. I am unabashedly happy about not having to do it, though I do feel a little guilty. Freezing rain on Monday covers our trees, and everything else, with icy casts. A friend writes about trees with agoraphobia (here); I am utterly charmed by this, and I feel much lighter.

Time, tide, and moon cycle continue forward, and it’s the beginning of March. As I stand in the kitchen, making our afternoon tea, I begin to notice that the sun has a new slant to it. It stays light until much later in the afternoon. Today, I hear a mourning dove’s plaintive call for the first time since late autumn. I also hear the owl’s who-who-whoooo-who-who in the middle of the day, and watch as the blue jays sound the alarm by imitating hawk cries, which scatters all the small birds from the feeders. None of my many field guides have anything to say about why that big ole owl might be hooting in the daytime. For now, it’s a mystery. A welcome and intriguing mystery.

Midway through December, I found out about a writing project called Reverb 10. It was billed as an “online initiative to reflect on [the past] year,” according to the website at http://www.reverb10.com. I’m typically not terribly fond of these kinds of things, but this one was different because it seemed thoughtfully and carefully done. Each day during December, a writing prompt, designed to get participants to consider and examine the past year, was generated. I received each day’s prompt as an email from about December 13^th onward, and I spent a few minutes from time to time pondering it. Many days, I even made a few notes about it in my journal.

There was one prompt that caught my attention and rolled around, niggling my brain. It was the one for December 15. It read, “Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in five minutes. Set an alarm for five minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010. (Author: Patti Digh)”

I wasn’t at all capable of doing that task in five minutes, so I had to change the rules. My prerogative, of course, as it is my blog. The question became, then: What won’t I forget about 2010?

That’s easy: the oil spill. At turns, the Deepwater Horizon oil blowout made me cry and made me rage, often inarticulately. It will be the hallmark of 2010 for me. This was my reaction to it then; it remains my reaction to it now, especially as it seems to have fallen off most people’s radars as quickly as it appeared.

Shame, of course, on those who are most culpable: British Petroleum and the US government. But shame, too, on those of us who took solace in the fantasy perpetuated by the media that most of the oil, the estimated 5 million barrels of oil, that gushed out of that hole in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico for four months, has simply vanished. Shame on those of us who believe that this oil no longer presents any lasting danger to the shorelines of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, or to the wider ecosystems of the Gulf and its neighboring waters. I urge you to read, and, yes, reread, Terry Tempest William’s essay, “The Gulf Between Us,” in Orion Magazine. She says, “To bear witness is not a passive act.” Bear witness. Do it. Do something.

Beyond oil, what I won’t forget about 2010, first and foremost, is that it was the year I revived my blog and began writing, really writing, again. There is much with which Michael helped me in this regard, and it wasn’t simply technology.

What else I won’t forget: The connections I began to make with other women writers. Sojourning on Deer Isle, on the Maine coast, with my family. Walking in my first 5k. Hearing (and seeing) Mary Oliver read her poems aloud at Wellesley College. Hearing Ms. Oliver read “Wild Geese” in That Voice, older and slightly cracked, but still so strong, was a gift without measure.

Seeing our first wind turbines, rising unexpectedly above the trees, while Michael and I we hiked one fall day at Wachusett Mountain State Reservation in Princeton, MA. The earthquake in Haiti. The flooding in Pakistan. The hundreds of thousands of people affected in both places. Participating for the first time in Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) with Springdell Farm and enjoying an entire growing season of local produce. Not worrying about contaminated eggs.

My parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. The New England March flood. Taking photos of the flooding in our area. Hiking through the enchanted Goose Cove woods across the sandbar to Barred Island. My 78-year old father falling off a ladder while trying to top a tree. Yes. Luckily, he is neither dead nor paralyzed. The deaths of two farm friends: Grampa Gerry, who managed the CSA pick-ups every week at Springdell Farm with a story and a chuckle and reminded me so much of my own grandfather Charlie, and Lyn Harris, the orchard man and owner of Autumn Hills Orchards. Both will truly be missed. The blogs I visit everyday or at least every week. Tennessee floods. Oklahoma tornadoes.

Writing some more. Meeting a long-time blogosphere friend and her dog. Going to NYC with her and meeting another blogosphere friend, while making some new friends. Complicated, but so good. Going to the top of the Empire State Building for the first time. Creating TintypesDigital LLC with Michael. Seeing Ground Zero for the first time since 9/11. Spending a glorious week with my sister and her children in our own old childhood haunts in NJ. Becoming friends with some great writers online. You know who are you are, and I thank you.

Eyjafjallajökul, the Iceland volcano, and all its ash. More writing. My New York Times Moment in Time. Losing a friend. Migraines much worse, a little better, status quo, a little better, a little better again, a little worse. A net gain, overall. Writing one poem. Sharing beloved Pine Meadow Pond with you, my readers. Woodpeckers outside my windows. Hal Borland.

Finally, I will not forget the coyotes ushering in the New Year as only they could. They sang it in on the Songlines, the Dreaming tracks. Utterly unlikely, I know. Yet, early New Year’s Day, I was dragged out of a deep, dark sleep by their song, which was far more compelling than any ball dropping in Times Square.

What mattered to you in 2010? Let me know in the comments.

Happy New Year from Pine Meadow Pond. As we head into 2011, may you find your own songlines ¹ and Dreaming tracks.

___________________________________

Holly Berries in Winter by Michael Clark, TintypesDigital

The pond shimmies in the cold, as if to say to the chill wind, “You can’t catch me.” The next morning, it wears a necklace of ice around its edges but continues to bob and weave. The wind gives up, and the calm breath of December descends overnight, slowly, slowly.

In the morning, the pond is still. And shiny and smooth.

It escapes its bonds one more time during a heavy rain. But then, the skies clear, it’s quiet in the night, and the ice-maker creeps in again. The pond will sleep now until spring.

While late autumn recedes, I’ve been reading a lot of Hal Borland.

Until last summer, I was unfamiliar with his work. I found out about him inadvertently, serendipitously, during a visit to one of our favorite bookstores, Blue Hill Books, in Blue Hill, Maine.

I happened to pick up a book there called Small Misty Mountain: The Awanadjo Almanack, by Rob McCall. The book is McCall’s daily record, his almanac of natural occurrences in and around Blue Hill and the nearby mountain called Blue Hill Mountain or Awanadjo. McCall quotes Borland here and there and includes several books in his bibliography. So, I went digging.

Borland, it turns out, wrote many fine books, most of them about the large patch of country he and his wife owned in northwest Connecticut on the Hoosatonic River. He was a well-respected nature writer, with a weekly column in the New York Times for over 30 years. He died in 1978, and his books went rather quickly out of print after his death. That’s a sad thing, because the ones I’ve been able to find used are wonderful. Discovering him has been like finding an old friend. My favorite books of his, at least thus far, are Twelve Moons of the Year (1979) and This Hill, This Valley (1957).

Borland was a careful observer of the nuances of the natural world.  He didn’t like being called a nature writer; he thought of himself as a natural philosopher. His observations of the southern Berkshire foothills are those that you can’t find in any field guide.

Many of Borland’s observations resonate with my own impressions of the natural world.

Take his description of tamarack trees in This Hill, This Valley. I had heard of tamaracks, also called larches, before. I may have even seen a few. But his description of them in late autumn intrigued me, and I started to look for them around here. One day late last month when I was driving home on one of my favorite roads, I gazed over at a stand of white pines at the far end of a farmer’s field, and, there, I noticed a clutch of about ten tamaracks. I almost drove off the road, not just because I was excited to finally see some of these trees in the fall, but because I was astonished at what they looked like.

They were as striking as Borland described. They were standing there, glowing “like giant candle flames of yellowish tan, tall and slim and symmetrical. They [were] about to shed their needles, for they are the woodchucks of the conifers, the only ones in our area which “hibernate” in the Winter. Their tufted needles will soon fall in a yellow shower and the bright tan of their branches will stand out against the grays and browns of the Winter hillsides.” (p. 206)

Like Borland, I find myself becoming an ever more careful observer.

The moss and lichens on the trees are green after last week’s heavy rain, as is the ground pine – a miniature forest running under my boots on which I try not to step. The sky is gray, though it is lit with that light that often foretells snow.

The temperatures have dropped again. I continue to believe there is clarity in the cold. The “drowsies” caused by my medication don’t stand a chance against 16º F when I’m out filling bird feeders and walking the pond edge. The bare trees reveal their bone structure.  Some are scrubby and non-descript. Others are magnificent, the Classical nude sculptures of the tree world.

Just before dusk, I watch the common winter songbirds at the feeders, and I am happy. These little creatures of feather and air have no idea how often they communicate their lightness to me. There is nothing remotely complicated about watching chickadees, titmice, and a single nuthatch fill up on seed before sundown. Yet, it is a pastime that has been bringing me pleasure and peace since I was a child.

The squirrels have already gone to their safe overnight places. The smaller birds are joined by a pair of cardinals. There is no noise but the back and forth twitterings of the cardinals. The end of the daylight, as I watch it happen, especially at this time of the year, is a peaceful time.

On one tree, a jay, a male cardinal, and a male Red-bellied woodpecker. So much color on a gray day.

Borland suggests that it takes time for our eyes to adjust from autumn’s fill-your-eyes-and-then-some color to winter’s subtle shadings. It does take a long time.

The colors of autumn are my favorite colors, the ones with which I would always choose to adorn and surround myself given a chance. It is the accent colors of winter of which I’m most fond – red and green – not the everyday browns and tans.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t developed an appreciation for those warm browns, redolent of spices and baking. The giant oak leaves that still don’t want to let go are the color of perfectly done toast. I would love to stroke the soft cinnamon fur of the red squirrel, and I’m amazed that the little Carolina wren can have feathers the exact shade of freshly grated nutmeg.

In This Hill, This Valley, Borland says, “Color becomes relative as the seasons shift. Brilliance is less a matter of color itself than one of contrast. The less there is to see, the more one sees of it. The eyes sharpen as the days turn chill and woods turn gray.”

The ears sharpen as well.

The coyotes are back now. I heard them singing the night before last, just as I was falling asleep. For a moment, I thought I was dreaming. In the next second, I knew I was awake. I hadn’t heard them in months. They come with the frozen waterways and ponds. I am deeply and profoundly grateful to hear coyotes still singing in the wild, their calls rolling and echoing across the icy dark.

The days are almost at their shortest. Night rules. But then daylight will start to tick back the other way. The end of the year really has nothing to do with the calendar. It might be better marked by the Winter Solstice, the shortest day.

This year, the Solstice coincides with the full moon, the Cold Moon, as the full moon of December is called. I’ve read that a solstitian full moon is a rare thing. In addition, there will be a full lunar eclipse visible in North America in the wee hours of the morning of December 21. Let me leave you with this, then, from my friend, Mr. Borland, writing in Twelve Moons of the Year, and whose voice you’ll likely encounter here again:

Now the year balances its accounts. … In our latitude we know that every year brings this time when not only the candle but the fire on the hearth, figurative if not literal, must burn at each end of the day…

And yet the short days provide their own bonus. The snows come, and dawn and dusk are like no other time of the year. We know again the long winter nights when the moon rides over a white world and the darkness thins away. The full-moon night on a snow-clad world is as long as the longest summer day, and the winter world glows with an ethereal shimmer.

Year to year we remember the short days and we tend to forget the long nights of moonlight and starlight, when it seems one might stand on a high hill and touch the Big Dipper. Who would not cut wood and burn a candle for a few such nights each year? (p. 348)

Peace and light to you this season from Pine Meadow Pond.

There are two gray months on the pond — November and February — bookends, if you will. This November is no exception; it’s already lonely and dreary. Already, the beauty of our New England October is hidden from view. The swans were still there yesterday, at the pond across the road, but they were clustered close together, and all but one had their heads beneath their wings. Everything seems to be closing up, looking inward.

Here, there are leaves still to be raked, furniture that has yet to be put away, detritus from the season past not yet gotten rid of. It’s a time between seasons, yet it is marked by an irrevocable march toward dark and cold. It’s a time of year that eats at me.

It’s also the third anniversary of my beloved dog’s death.

I have kept what I could of Winter’s belongings, though dogs, to their credit, leave little behind. Her collar with her tags is looped around the rear-view mirror of my car. Winter was a reluctant car passenger all of her life. But faced with accompanying me or being left behind, she had little real choice, and we went on many good car journeys together. After she died, there was no question as to what to do with her collar.

I also have a plastic baggy filled with her fur. The thing about Great Pyrenees is that they have the most wondrous coats, and they shed all the time. I had been collecting little bits of it for a short time before her death. I knew Winter was starting to fail; she was 12, which was a good long life for such a big dog. I still find strands of her fur every so often; it weaves its way into fabric, and nothing except patient fingers can get it out. Pyrs have a particular smell, but the fur in the bag doesn’t smell like her anymore. When I pull it out, though, it feels like her, and for a moment I can imagine smoothing her ears. Nothing else feels like her fur.

The pain of her death isn’t as fierce as it was, but my sorrow at her absence is still deep. As always, I wonder why it annoys me that her death on November 1 coincides with Halloween and All Saints’ Day. Perhaps it has something to do with ancient seasonal celebrations being co-opted by something darker, something that explicitly serves the interests of organized religion, something that doesn’t feel like celebration to me.

I’d much rather associate her death with Samhain, a harvest festival dating back to the Celts who believed that the veil between the spirit and living worlds was thin when crops had been harvested, spring and summer plants were dying, and animals were being slaughtered. Like Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, Samhain also celebrated the deaths of family members. In Mexico, Día de los Muertos began as an indigenous ritual over 2000 years ago. The first day of this celebration is Día de los Inocentes, the day when children and infants – the innocents – who died are honored. Surely, dogs must be among the innocents.

A dear friend mentions that she spends Día de los Muertos in quiet introspection, communing with departed loved ones. Yes, I think, that’s exactly it. It doesn’t erase the pain and sorrow. It doesn’t mean I don’t still miss Winter acutely. It means that perhaps I can begin to celebrate her life.

A long while ago, I wrote about what turned out to be my last walk with Winter along the shores of the pond. She was old and sick, and she couldn’t walk very well. Together, we got to the water where the sun was shining, reflecting the late October color of the trees on the pond. Being with her that afternoon was a singular experience.

I’ll share that bit of writing here:

When I take Winter outside, both of us are hoping that this time she’ll be able to squat and relieve herself, in the backyard, the way she always has. I lift her over the utility room doorsill, so that she doesn’t have to try to climb over it.

She leans her weight against me and stands there for a few minutes. Winter has never been much of a leaner, as some dogs are. But now, it is, she has discovered, perhaps the best way to steady herself. She doesn’t squat, and I finally accept that she probably can’t at this point.

She sniffs the breeze ruffling her fur and cranes her neck a bit, and I know that she wants to go nearer to the pond. I help her over to the path that skirts along the road; it’s less interesting than the shore by our house, but it’s smoother. It is a short stroll away, a few hundred feet at most, but it is a very, very long walk for Winter now. I have to use a brace that goes around her body to support her because, without it, her legs buckle. Even though she has lost a good deal of weight over the past six months, she still weighs close to 90 pounds, and, if she were still able to jump up, she could put her paws on my shoulders. She’s a big dog. I help her as much as I can, but I can’t easily carry her, nor will she let me.

She wants to sniff and nose around; it’s difficult for her, though she doesn’t seem particularly troubled. We wander down the path, taking our time, to the edge of the pond. It’s cool, the end of October, but the sun is out, and there seem to be good smells for Winter to investigate. I let her direct us, steadying her when she needs it.

She snuffles under leaves, and then she turns her attention to the water. She won’t go in; she never does. She, like many Pyrs, does not like water, though being out in the rain troubles her not at all. But a bath or a very, very large puddle of the stuff? Not a chance. She smells it carefully, and then again, and then she looks out over the water. She maneuvers herself, so that she’s half sitting, half leaning against my legs. A good way to rest. She and I both know I can lift her up again without causing her undue pain. We stay there for a long while, just watching, staying in our patch of sun. The geese are making a ruckus at the far shore of the pond, and I watch Winter’s ears move up and down as she listens to them. Finally, it’s time to go; I worry about her getting chilled.

We head back up the path, and she stumbles a little. I steady her, and she leans against me for a few minutes, panting. I stroke her head and her silky ears. For right now, we have time. Someone, a woman in a car, drives by, slows down, and then says, “Oh, what a beautiful dog.” My eyes immediately fill with tears, and it’s all I can do to utter a thick “thank you.” It is only days before the end, and I see it coming. The woman must not be able to see Winter’s brace. Or maybe she does.

I suppose she sees the truth that is this grand old dog. Her unmistakable presence. Her face with those deep brown eyes, calmly looking back at the woman. Her white fur has gotten thin; now it stands out and away from her body, like an ethereal cloud, warmed by the afternoon light. She is still beautiful. Maybe even more so, here at the end. I believe this is what people mean when they talk about grace. And maybe what the woman sees is us, Winter and me. We’re so connected, operating more often as one, rather than two, a woman and her dog.

I do not know what is communicated to beloved animals at the end, but some say that you need to tell them that it’s okay for them to leave you. I tell her, finally. It’s not really true. What is true is that she needs me to help her through this last painful stage of her life when, though she is still lucid, still Winter, she has little control of her body and its functions. When I tell her again that it’s okay, a few days later in the vet’s office, she relaxes into my arms. The look she gives me is long, deep, and, ultimately, unfathomable. She has never been a dog who looked away when you looked at her. She holds my gaze that last morning until the contents of the vet’s injection takes her away.

I carry that day at the pond with me. It’s bright and clear. I didn’t know it then, but that day was a celebration of all that was good and true between a woman and her dog as they walked together, a day when not only were the trees reflected in the water, but so was a smiling white dog. Día de los Inocentes.

I carry that day with me.

On this, the first day of the return to standard time, the sunrise was beautiful and early, and the skies stayed blue for a couple of hours. Then, the clouds moved in; we began our slow return to gray, and some snow flurries sneaked in. In fact, the weather forecast calls for a dusting of snow overnight.

While making one of my many morning observations of the pond, albeit from the back door in the kitchen inside our warm house, I spotted a Great Blue heron sliding along the edge of our shore, its feathers almost exactly the same shade of gray as the sky, its legs almost completely covered by the cold leaf-covered water. The heron was in the perfect spot for me to take its picture, and I had my camera at the ready, but it had already spotted my slow, careful movements, and I knew that if I opened the door, it would fly away, like it always does. I chose to watch it instead, though it took at least five minutes for the heron to get back to the task at hand instead of watching me.

Nothing stalks prey quite like a Great Blue heron. In retrospect, when I wrote about the crows stalking around a couple of posts ago, that was wrong. They weren’t really creeping up on anything; they were doing something comical, like a bunch of stuffed marionettes being marched around from above. The Great Blue, however, with its graceful long neck, odd way of lifting its legs one by one out of the water, and leading with its spear-sharp beak, definitely stalks. I watched it come out of the water, having caught nothing, and start to wander in the woods, until I lost sight of it, its body blending in with the bark of the trees, perfectly camouflaged.

I received an unexpected compliment this past week which made me very happy. Dave Bonta, over at Via Negativa, included The Pine Meadow Pond Journal in his “Smorgasblog” sidebar. Dave is a talented poet and writer, and I’m frequently moved by his work. He has also been writing lately about the fall. Two of my favorites are his poem, “October dusk,” for its evocative, gorgeous imagery, and his recent post, “The shining season,” for its beautiful photography and accompanying text which allow the reader to tag along with Dave on a recent hike through his part of the world. Please spend some time exploring Via Negativa and Dave’s other blogs; you won’t be disappointed.

The Pine Meadow Pond Journal was also recently accepted into The Nature Blog Network, which is a community of nature blog writers, as well as a “portal through which readers and publishers alike can locate the very best nature blogs on the net.” There are some seriously topnotch science and nature blogs out there, in a wide variety of specific subject areas, and you can find many of them by clicking on The Nature Blog Network’s badge over there in the sidebar to the right, just below the tag cloud.

Speaking of badges, are you wondering what that one at the top is all about? NaNoWriMo What-Mo? If you’re not familiar with it, that silly tongue twister is the acronym for National Novel Writing Month which occurs every year during the month of November. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days. Yes, that’s a lot of words in a month. And lots and lots of people – more than 200,000 – from all over the world sign up to do it. This year, I’ve signed up to do it, too.

Have I suddenly turned wannabe novel writer? No, I have no desire, now or ever, to write a novel. I like my real life characters – geese, turtles, coyotes, hawks – much better than any characters I could dream up. The good people at The Office of Letters and Light (could there be a more perfect name?), the organization behind NaNoWriMo, is very egalitarian. They welcome all comers. It doesn’t matter if you don’t write novels. In that case, you can be a NaNo Rebel. And I very much like being a rebel.

So why am I doing it? Several of my blogosphere writing friends are doing it this year, so that was part of the draw. But I’m really doing it for the writing. It’s for the discipline and the practice. It’s hard, and it’s risky. As author Gina Frangello writes in her essay at The Nervous Breakdown, “Everything that matters burns. I believe that. On the page and in life.” I’m working on a few burning things of my own: my migraine memoir, some longer stuff about the pond, and a difficult piece about the death of my dog three years ago.

Some of it may become blog posts, but maybe not. Some of it is looking as if it wants to join together and not be separate anymore. The number in the badge is my current word count for the month. I’m not terribly concerned about getting to 50,000 words. If I do, great. But, as I said, this is about the writing. Butt in chair, hands on keyboard, every day, writing like a woman possessed, or, should I say, writing like a writer.

To survey the landscape now is to see that the oranges and yellows have mellowed to a rich, deep copper, no less compelling against the still turquoise sky. The oaks have yet to shed their leaves, but most of the maples, and all of the ash and birches, are bare. The apples are sweet and crisp, and the winter squash from our CSA have been prolific; we have bowls full of these riches on our table. It’s the end of October.

The rushes along the far end of the pond show traces of the same copper in their stems, while the cattails begin their end of season bloom, all fluff and fuzz, finally recalling their namesakes.

It is the end of October, and though Nature “wore a gloomy hood”¹ through some part of it, it was dazzling this year.

I discovered a poem by William Butler Yeats in which he wrote about the wild swans who visited where he lived in Ireland every autumn. Here ‘tis:

Wild Swans at Coole

The trees are in their autumn beauty,
The woodland paths are dry,
Under the October twilight the water
Mirrors a still sky;
Upon the brimming water among the stones
Are nine and fifty swans.

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon me
Since I first made my count;
I saw, before I had well finished,
All suddenly mount
And scatter wheeling in great broken rings
Upon their clamorous wings.

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread.

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold,
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.

But now they drift on the still water
Mysterious, beautiful;
Among what rushes will they build,
By what lake’s edge or pool
Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day
To find they have flown away?²

There’s the great poet, only a little older than I am now, walking on a dry path in the twilight, finding again the wild swans in their pond. He counts them as he has every year since he was a much younger man, before all things changed, before he got older, before the First World War.

The beautiful and the mysterious tug hard at both the speaker and the reader amid those autumn trees. Will the swans still be there in the morning when he awakens? Will the geese still be here at Pine Meadow Pond when I do?

In fact, the geese left the pond the night before I published my last post; I wasn’t completely sure until the next night when the absence of sound seemed louder than the geese themselves. The pond stilled its waters soon after, and I found it a lonely place.

As I began to resign myself to the quiet season, I heard a crowd of honking and splashing at dusk just a few days ago. It was another small flock of Canada geese, on their way south from someplace further north. Since they’ve arrived, they’ve spent their days on the pond, so there is, again, a constant and welcome chatter all day long.

There are other visitors, too. Each spring and autumn, we are honored with the presence of a small flock of Ring-necked ducks, numbering about 20 or so. They stay for a month or two in each season, depending on the weather. They’re small compared to our other waterfowl, about 17”, and they’re diving ducks. I love to watch them. They paddle fast, like little boats, and then they suddenly dive beneath the surface, only to come up, minutes later, in a completely different spot.

In one of those odd, unlooked for wrinkles in the universe that suddenly shrinks a span of over 90 years, I noticed today that there are now five swans at the pond across the road. It wasn’t yet twilight, but I walked with Mr. Yeats amidst the October trees under a still, still sky.

¹Clare, John. “The Sweetest Woman There.” Selected Poems 1793-1844. Public domain. Full text here.

²Yeats, William Butler. “The Wild Swans at Coole.” The Wild Swans at Coole. New York: Macmillan, 1919. Public domain in the U.S. Project Gutenberg online edition here.

In the morning, just before sunrise, the Canada geese wake me with their chatter, just as they have all spring and summer. These days, they fly away within an hour or two. There are few, if any, on Pine Meadow Pond throughout the day.

They return around dusk, flying in from various directions. No longer do they fight for territory or prime nesting spots. No longer do they give me fits as they try to walk their broods across the road to the neighboring pond. Now, they land in groups of twos and threes, sometimes more, throughout the evening.

For the past few weeks, the geese have been gathering at night at the far end of our pond. A steady percolation of sound burbles out of the darkness through the bedroom window that’s now open only a crack. One evening, before it gets fully dark, they’ll gather one final time, decide that conditions are right, and be on their way.

I think that will happen soon this year, though it’s much earlier than usual. They don’t usually migrate until the pond freezes over in late November or early December.

I love these birds, barely tolerant of humans, decidedly untamed, and utterly, defiantly migratory.

Their imminent departure disquiets me.

Once they leave, the pond’s waters will freeze in place until spring, and I’ll have to work against freezing in place myself.

For the moment, the pond is on the move. That’s what we call it when the breeze finally picks up from its summer lull and prevails again from the northeast. The pond is no longer still; now it looks alive, even as the summer’s vegetation dies in and around it. Rows of the smallest of waves ripple and roll toward our shore.

While making a pot of coffee in the kitchen, I idly watch three tufted titmice, two chickadees, and a couple of white-breasted nuthatches on the deck. They don’t actually have my full attention; I’m mulling over something else. They’re calm, oblivious to my movements. Something about their behavior causes me to shift my focus directly to them, and I realize each of them is conducting a thorough investigation of the deck, the nuthatches being especially methodical by hanging upside down and examining all the underneath spots.

I’m amused, and I watch the whole production with interest. It takes several minutes for their behavior to register; suddenly, though I have no scientific evidence to back it up, I know exactly what they’re doing. They’re looking for the birdfeeder, and they’ve learned that the human in the kitchen puts food out for them. The window is slightly open, so I speak to them – not unusual for me – and say, “Not yet, birdies, not yet.” One of the titmice and one of the chickadees cock their heads at me.

A week later, at about the same time of day and, again, on the deck, there are five dark-eyed juncos of the slate-colored variety. I haven’t seen any since spring. These sweet birds, looking dapper in their tuxedos, have come south from their summer homes in the northern boreal forests to spend the winter with us as they always do.

Like the chickadees and titmice of last week, they, too, are fly-jumping to and fro around the deck. They perch on the pole and shepherd’s crook from which the bird feeder hangs and look around. Juncos are ground feeders, and I rarely see them up on the railings, never mind anywhere near where the feeder usually hangs. I tell them the same thing as I did the others: “Too early, guys.” They’re not convinced.

During the day, the air waves belong to the blue jays and the crows. In the absence of much other bird song, I more easily hear the variety of the jays’ calls, especially the one that so reminds me of the sound the rusty clothesline reel in the backyard used to make when I was a child. I’m not sure what’s going on with the crows, but they seem to be in a fairly constant state of perturbation. They vacillate between stalking around silently and ruckus-ing themselves into such a state I fear their fool heads may fall off.

Red Squirrel in White Pine

There’s some heavy traffic under the swamp maple outside my window. Chipmunks scurry past with cheek pouches bulging while others, in trees, chitter at them. Every so often, one gets its twitching nose out of joint and chases another, and a scuffle breaks out, but I have no idea which one is the perp and which one is the victim. I’m not entirely sure they do, either.

Gray squirrels come and go in a steady stream on their never-ending mission to bury nuts. They are usually more dignified, ignoring their little cousins, and, yet, they, too, engage in a bit of rough and tumble occasionally, especially the smaller ones, which I take to be the youngest. Their other cousin, the red squirrel, is the noisy one. It remains in the trees and hollers at everything that moves in the vicinity. Each time I think I might get a shot of the Great Blue Heron before it, too, migrates, the red squirrel alerts it to my presence, and off it goes. I have many out-of-focus pictures of it flying away. I’ve been finding pine cones tucked under the grill on the deck; I’m fairly certain one of the red squirrels is putting them there for a winter food cache.

I find myself going outside often to check on this or that. I’m not really doing anything, except, perhaps, manifesting my own seasonal restlessness. I have a felt need to be near the pond and in and among the trees I love. I sniff, I touch, I look, and I listen. My official “field collection” basket, which is just an old, not-too-big, wicker basket that I’ve had for years, is full to the brim with colored leaves, acorns, and pinecones. I need almost none of it for identification; I’ve realized I just want it – a bit of the outside – there on my desk while I work.

Unlike the birds checking to see if the birdfeeders are out, or the squirrels storing food, I don’t have to secure my food supply for the winter. There are other things, though, that are helpful to secure in advance of the long months ahead. I stare at the turquoise autumn sky for so long that it leaves an imprint when I close my eyes; I do the same when I see the late afternoon sunshine magnify itself one hundred-fold on yellow and orange leaves. I’m mesmerized even as I memorize these scenes. I’ll use them for nourishment of a different sort come winter.

Dear Readers – I wrote this post last month while I was migrating my blog to its new platform and doing all the accompanying behind-the-scenes work. I hope you’ll agree it’s still timely. ~ Beth

I’m at my desk, listening to familiar pond sounds – the high-pitched chip, chip, chip of an agitated chipmunk and the scoldings of a couple of titmice. There’s a breeze coming in off the pond, which Michael describes as “luscious,” and for which we’re both grateful, as the mercury is supposed to climb to well above 90° F today. The pond house is not air conditioned, except for a small window air conditioner in the bedroom.

It’s our first day back from almost a week spent in Downeast Maine. I still have ocean in my ears, gulls soaring white against blue skies in my eyes, and salt in my nostrils. It’s a curious feeling to have returned to a place one truly loves, a place one calls home, yet feel that one is not wholly there. In my particular case, part of me is still wandering that rocky, meandering coast.

There, we cross causeways linking places as if by threads. We sleep on an island floating on astonishingly green sea water. We spot a pair of bald eagles doing the samba as they tag-team for fish. A wee hummingbird carefully checks out my red shirt as I hold my breath, listening to its wings beat the air.

On the island’s roads, impatient Mainers pass us over the double yellow as we gawk at yet another beautiful vista. Impoverished families with too many children and not enough money rub elbows with well-heeled tourists in the only grocery market around. It’s a place where people work for themselves, whenever they can, doing different jobs as the seasons change, living off the land and the sea. And of all the many places I’ve been in the U.S., these islands and shorelines may well be my favorite.

We hike through pine forests whose floors are an expanse of curly, frosty moss, like something from The Lord of the Rings, traversing a trail continuously crisscrossed with roots. The trail goes up a steady incline until we walk along a level crest of pale gray granite; then, we climb down, down, down, and, finally, blink our way out of the relative darkness of the forest, and on to a wide sandbar, revealed by the lowering tide and lit by the late afternoon sun. The sandbar connects the island we started from to another island, very small. It’s an island where bald eagles nest, but the chicks have already fledged.

We find a tide pool. A tiny, perfect crab of scarlet seems to have the realm all to itself. Although we are conserving our water and are tired and hot, the hike back takes less time. Have our eyes and feet gotten used to traversing all the roots without tripping? The woods are as quiet as they were on our outbound journey. Just a few rustlings in the leaves, an occasional bird call I can’t place. One or two territorial red squirrels chatter at us. We all have the sense that there are more creatures in the forest watching from their hiding places. The others mention bears; I’m not worried, and I smile to myself.

As we become familiar with the road our inn is on, we begin to notice more, not less. Several houses have smaller cottages on their properties; perfect studios for writers and musicians. We comment on the house with all the interesting metalwork – reclaimed and repurposed scraps formed into sculpture; each time we pass, we see something new. We admire the meadows, part of a nature preserve; they are still in bloom, full of goldenrod and sea lavender, and the boundary fences are adorned with many birdhouses.

We pass a gnarled apple tree on the side of our road several times a day. It is a beautiful old thing, and it has already dropped a quantity of golden apples tinged with red. These apples lying in a pile on the roadside under the dear tree pierce something inside me to my own core. I recognize the feeling; it’s one I’ve experienced frequently. It’s a heightened sense of consciousness, the feeling that I must pay attention now to this moment, to this place, to the loved ones I am with, and not forget, not ever forget, before the moment slips away forever.

I recently came across a reference to Jack Kerouac’s “Essentials of Spontaneous Prose” (1959). In “Spontaneous Prose,” along with an explication of his writing method, Kerouac set down a list of 30 writing essentials. It has been years since I’ve read the list. Once upon a time, I had a copy of it pinned to my bulletin board. Here are the first five:

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never to get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form

Many of the rest are just as wondrously wild with the occasional non-sequitur, like number three, thrown in. I suppose if you’re Jack Kerouac, however, number three is not a non-sequitur in the least.

Some of the rules defy simple interpretation and are just plain wacky. For example, number 11 states, “Visionary tics shivering in the chest.” Rather than employ my literary interpretation skills, I think I’ll just leave that one alone.

To peruse the whole list, plus the rest of the Essentials, you can find it here.

It is with Rule number 19, however, that Kerouac lands the great resonator:

“Accept loss forever.”

Loss is the thing that’s always circling around the edges if you’re a writer. It’s not something we talk about very often. It’s the consciousness that time moves faster than we do at the same time it moves slowly. Moments, feelings, people, vistas are in constant danger of being lost, and we know we will eventually lose them. Those beautiful, piercing, glistening moments of full clarity. We know they won’t, can’t last.

Life is a fleeting proposition.

Loss, to a writer, is the knowledge that no matter how hard we try, we can’t record, observe, pay attention to, be conscious of everything. And, yet, our poems, our songs, our essays, and our pictures and paintings are our attempts to capture the moments, the impressions. It’s an imperfect art. We stand outside of ourselves, anticipating and recording, at the same we’re participating. The best writers and artists succeed, or come very close to succeeding, and those are the works that land like blows to our very bodies and take our breath away.

We write because and in spite of loss.

We write to record those scenes of golden apples and astonishingly green sea water. We write to preserve the curve of a particular cheek and the crinkle in the corner of a loved one’s eye on that lovely afternoon, standing on the sandbar between two islands in Maine.

“Idgie lit a cigarette for Smokey, the hobo, and said,

‘… One November, a big flock of ducks, oh, about forty or more, landed right smack in the middle of that lake, and while they were sitting there, that afternoon, a fluke thing happened. The temperature dropped so fast that the whole lake froze over, as solid as a rock, in a matter of three seconds. One, two, three, just like that.’

Smokey was amazed at the thought. ‘You don’t mean it?’

‘Yep.’

‘Well, I reckon it must have killed them ducks.’

Idgie said, ‘Why, hell no. They just flew off and took the lake with ‘em. That lake’s somewhere in Georgia, to this very day…’

He turned and looked at her, and when he realized she was pulling his leg, his blue eyes crinkled up and he started laughing so hard that he started to cough at the same time, and she had to bang him on the back.”

No, I’m not in Georgia. Nor Alabama.

Pine Meadow Pond is still very much where it’s always been, and I’m right beside it.

I did, however, freeze the old Pine Meadow Pond Journal at a certain point in time; and, the trusty computer “ducks” then helped me lift and move all my old blog posts, along with the furniture, and everything else important from there to here. It isn’t called “migrating a blog” for nuthin’.

“But where is here?” you’re asking.

This, my dear readers, is The Pine Meadow Pond Journal’s new home.

Welcome. Make yourselves comfortable.

It’s pretty nice, huh?

I’ve bade good-bye to the landlord at web.me and set myself up in a new place, with a little help from my friends. Cue the Beatles. Or Joe Cocker, depending on your preference.

When I first started blogging, I had very little knowledge of desktop publishing. iWeb, which came installed on my trusty MacBook Pro, was easy. From the old days of using Microsoft Publisher, I knew how to create textboxes, place photos, and line up text. It took a little while to create a post, and the templates were kind of dull and limiting in iWeb, but that was okay.

As I went along, however, my skills in digital photography, social media, and desktop publishing grew and, not to place the entire blame on the tool, I outgrew iWeb. I can hear my grandmother’s voice in my head now, “You have to have the right tool for the job.” This was the woman who made sure I had my own toolbox when I got married. There was also the little matter of my lovely domain name, www.pinemeadowpond.com, which I’ve owned for a long time, having to forward to web.me. Ugh.

So here we are.

Feel free to poke around. There may still be a little dust in some of the corners, but, as I mentioned above, and thanks to Michael’s WordPress wizardry, all the old Pine Meadow Pond Journal pieces have been imported, more rather than less intact. New posts are in the works, being readied for posting.

Regular readers, I was able to move your comments over with only the most minor of changes. Please keep commenting. Knowing that you’re out there and thinking and responding to what I’m writing about means more to me than you can know. New readers, I encourage you to join in on the conversation.

In the interest of keeping all my posts in one place, I’ve also brought most of my “Notes from the Pond” tumblr™ posts in, as well. I’ve edited or revised some of those posts, so that they make more sense contextually and are in keeping with the rest of my posts.

I’ve finally written a real “About” page. I encourage regular and new readers to check it out, as it is intended to give you some insight into who I am, and what I’m all about, as well as some long overdue information about Pine Meadow Pond.

For those of you interested in such things, I’m using WordPress 3.0 with a customized Thesis theme.

The tall tale I’ve quoted at the top of this post is from Fannie Flagg’s 1987 novel, Fried Green Tomatoes at The Whistle Stop Café. The image of that lake being flown over the land by a flock of ducks has stayed with me since I first read the novel. I’m reminded of it each year when this pond freezes over, and the last of the Canada geese leave.

The novel tells a quirky, richly drawn story, full of idiosyncratic characters; I highly recommend it. The film is also quite good, with a stellar cast that includes Kathy Bates and Jessica Tandy.

If the cooler weather we’ve been having lately persists, and we have a regular New England autumn, it won’t be that long — a couple of months, maybe — before Pine Meadow Pond does freeze. For now, though, I intend to enjoy every minute of one of my favorite times of the year.

Towanda!

Over half a BILLION eggs have been recalled due to possible salmonella contamination, and it appears that the contaminated eggs have come from two giant factory farms in Iowa.

Perhaps the buy local movement isn’t so crazy, after all.

Check out what The New York Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, has to say about the egg debacle here. Note Kristof’s statistic, from the Promar study released a year ago last month, that “95% of American egg-laying hens are raised in small battery cages.” These are very small cages into which several hens are stuffed. As you can see from the picture below, the hens have virtually no room to even change position, let alone turn around.

Egg laying hens in a factory farm battery cage. Photo by Ethelred released into public domain.

These hens live in deplorable conditions that can’t help but promote disease; they are terribly inhumane to boot.

It is easier than ever to buy eggs from locally raised, truly free-range hens. Search them out. Farmers’ markets are a good place to start, but farm stands also frequently have eggs. Check even your local grocery store — mine, which is admittedly part of a very small and very local chain, carries local eggs from a small farm. Don’t forget your neighbors; raising chickens has gotten to be a very popular hobby, and most hobbyists have more eggs than they know what to do with.

A caveat: Even eggs from well-cared for chickens are not 100% guaranteed to be free of salmonella, but you can decrease your chances of coming in contact with the bacteria. Guard your family’s health, as well as your own.