Friday, January 30, 2015

snow, solitude, and the sea

















I sit in a hotel in Portland Maine as i type this post. My husband and I are here celebrating our 35th anniversary. "Why Maine?" and "Why winter?"These questions (asked by many)  passed through my mind as i walked along the coastal path today taking pictures of Portland Head Lighthouse. "THIS," i think to myself is "why".
I meet two people during my walk on the snowy trail and both voice their amazement at what we are experiencing. We pass quickly respecting and understanding each others need for solitude in the face of such beauty.  This evening my heart is filled with gratitude for sea, snow, wind and weather. For solitude and a husband who understands.

"Our language has wisely sensed the two sides of being alone.  It has created the word "loneliness" to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word "solitude" to express the glory of being alone."  Paul Johannes Tillich, the Eternal Now



Tuesday, January 27, 2015

miracle moment






































Think me strange if you like, but i find it quite amazing when i find myself witnessing something as simple as a squirrel on a fence (especially in a pose such as this.) :) I imagine a satellite high in space zooming in on the continent, then Kansas, then Topeka. It quickly zooms down to a central city block and finally the alley where we stand, squirrel and me. 


And i say to myself again, “Isn’t every moment, miracle!”


Thursday, January 22, 2015

ready for viewing

















The sky is an ever changing work of art. What is it that keeps us from running out of our homes and places of work to see what it looks like NOW?

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Barn on a January Evening

















“In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.”  ~ Aaron Rose

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

winter's voice

















"Never are voices so beautiful as on a winter's evening, when dusk almost hides the body, and they seem to issue from nothingness with a note of intimacy seldom heard by day."  ~Virginia Woolf


Have you heard the voice of the woods, of late,
through the cold and wintry air?


Monday, January 12, 2015

Unlike Any Other Beauty






































"There is peace there: and silence is there--and, withal, a beauty that is not like any other beauty." Fiona Macleod speaking of the highlands in winter

*A Sunday afternoon walk through the woods behind my house renders to me the peace, silence and beauty Macleod so eloquently speaks of. 

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

lessons from a pond in winter




















there is a thing called
raw
cold
beauty



















even feathers
get stuck sometimes
(take heart; spring is coming)















it doesn't matter if i understand how
it all happens
but my choice to see
or not to see
is daily life or death
to me



"What a severe yet master artist old Winter is.....No longer the canvas and the pigments, but the marble and the chisel."  ~John Burroughs  "The Snow-Walkers"  1866