“Antisthenes says that in a certain faraway land the cold is so intense that words freeze as soon as they are uttered, and after some time then thaw and become audible, so that words spoken in winter go unheard until the next summer.”

~ Plutarch

“Welcome, winter. Your late dawns and chilled breath make me lazy, but I love you nonetheless.”

~ Terri Guillemets

p.s. 30 days of wonder will be open for registration through saturday, for any last-minute souls who are in need of a visual reminder to breathe. this was one participant’s response to the welcome email: “just as i thought. the very best kind of medicine.”

“Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.”

~ A.A. Milne

atlas and i were on an adventure this weekend when these red leaves called to me. they stood tall above the golden weeds, a single branch of red, in front of a very blue lake. i had to wade through the weeds to get to them.

when i saw this photo, i knew why they had summoned me. they were not autumn leaves, but a dragonfly, and the dragonfly wanted to be witnessed.

(they could also be a fairy or a butterfly or a bird in flight, but i saw the dragonfly first.)

i found this quote on the internet today and had to share. i both love and hate it.

love because – truth.

hate because – truth.

i want to see the whole path, not just the next step!

(and yes, i am very fond of book + movie spoilers.)

the wild apple must be a distant cousin of the lilac. in their respective seasons, they each grow in profusion here in the keweenaw peninsula.

it is now wild apple season and i try an apple from every tree i pass. as thoreau said, “what is sour in the house a bracing walk makes sweet. some of these apples might be labeled, ‘to be eaten in the wind.'”

there are many sour apples, to be sure. but every so often, i find a tree with apples that are perfect for pies or crumbles or just-plain-eating.

you belong somewhere you feel free.

(sometimes, i think i wound up here to learn about being wild and free, so these lyrics often spring to mind. thanks, tom petty.)

“The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint, that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come. To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.”

~ Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place

p.s. the blog will be quiet for a week, as my sister helen and i are in rhode island, meeting our new twin nephews. happy happy happy.

“Against a dark sky all flowers look like fireworks. There is something strange about them, at once vivid and secret, like flowers traced in fire in the phantasmal garden of a witch.”

~ G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions