In the North, our world is beginning to expand and unfold; buds are unfolding into blossoms, bears have given birth to their young, and bees are expanding their family within the hive. The songs and calls of birds are  more audible and linger into the evening until, when,  there is a transition of duties and the chorus of frogs  leads the twilight into night.

This expansion is the intangible quality of Spring, a quality that keeps us in rhythm with the seasons. We may not remember small details from last Spring, but we certainly remember the feeling, the resonance, the quality of what is Springness. This knowing, this connection, runs in our bones in the same way that a songbird holds the knowledge to return to her nesting grounds. 

Food, shelter, warmth, we forget the remarkable provisions of the evergreen forest. Blocking winter winds, evergreens grace the landscape, a familiar green patina. From coastal shore to alpine tree line, and from southern latitudes to the far reaches of the taiga, evergreens are so familiar we forget their remarkable capacity to adapt and provide.

With drooping, graceful sleeves, evergreen branches are designed with downward swoops to easily shed snow build up, and with waxy needles, moisture stays within instead of being lost to biting winter air. Resin, that sweet fragranced anti-freeze, runs in the blood of trees, keeping the sap moving enough for the evergreen to endure long winter nights and short winter days.

The evergreens around our neighbourhoods and about our homes are reminders of their brethern far, far to the north, enduring cold sweeping winds and short sun lit days. With fragrant branches they shelter and nourish the intrepid and the solitary.

A trip to Peru

Spent most of February in Peru and Bolivia. Here are a couple of pics of this remarkable country.

Lake Titicaca

Bolivian Border Crossing

In the Jungle

Sillustani

A nazca glyph from the ocean

My family

For the greater part of the Northern Hemisphere, February is the coldest month as the Earth gives up the last of her warmth and the Northern Wind establishes his realm of snow and ice. Snapping with crystalline teeth, the Arctic Air pushes down from the polar north, a necessary pump, driving movement of air and flow around our planet; cleansing, purifying.

For those who do not follow the sun to warmer realms, an impasse is reached.  Small creatures hide under a blanket of snow, sap does not rise, and in snow clad woods, the humble grey-green lichen becomes a bounteous feast.

There can never be a triumph over winter, but endurance, patience, remembrance.

The winter woods seem empty but there is feathered movement between the branches. Greys and greens are suddenly broken by a rusty smudge as a chickadee swings close with crackling curiosity.

He is like a lit match in the gloom. So much intensity in one small creature. Winter does not phase the chickadee. Impervious to cold snaps and icy winds, he forages in the same exuberant manner as though on a summer day.

A  bright eye watches me watching and I witness the eternal spark of spirit in an adornment of feathers.

Winter Twilight Blues

Ultramarine, sapphire, indigo, cyan, amethyst, violet.  Velvety and rich, these colours arrive in that magical moment when the rotation of the planet holds light  between the day and the night. It is that moment of the day when we get a chance to be steeped like raw material in this vat of twilight dye.

As soft and gentle as smoke, twilight weaves and stains all things. The gold of the day is done and greens and ambers disappear and the very air between trees is a suffusion of blue. It reverberates, vibrates and causes the edges of things to soften and blur.

A most wonderful time, the time between what was and what is to become.

The time of twilight does not last very long, especially in winter. If you remember to see it, to watch this blue silken banner unfurl, take a moment, for you are witnessing the very preparation of nightfall.

Where the world isn't blanketed in a dazzle of white, colours are soft and muted. Olive, slate, chestnut, indigo and amethyst gentle the landscape. On occasion, with white limbs, a birch illumines a field and rambling patches of rose-hips bleed against the sky, all a tumble from summer's leftover extravagence.

To come across a clearing filled with willows, is lucky indeed. Here, acid green, bold cranberry and amber branches glow like embers from a forgotten campfire, warming the toes of the somber evergreens.

Luna

We owe much to the moon, her silvery light illuminating gardens, flower blooms, and boughs of branches. In between these silvery pools of light, deep shadows push away the familiar, changing and transforming what is known. Details matter less. There is more space and very little sense of time under a full moon, only the liquid light and the patterns of shadows.

In so much moonlight, it is like being on another planet. As we watch her sinking westward, we slip back inside to our yellow-filled lights and rest our heads, our beds comfortable and familiar and yet, we have been saturated with the strange and the unknown. Our sleep becoming a mysterious re-dream.

The Wind Element

Wind- an element we take for granted, but suddenly remembered when spring changes to summer for the softer breezes that come hold many qualities. Warmth, softness and a tangible feeling that one can sense but not put into words with the intellect.

There is a sense of feeling where the wind has been. This wind that is visiting you is knowing and has seen. It has blown through the smoke of clear cuts, over the heat rising off cracked dry river beds, it has blown through waterfalls, witnessed human confusions, harm, joys and achievements. It remembers you from last year and is visiting you now.

  Remember to greet what can not be seen.

Sun

As I sit outside, a single dewdrop in the grass is reflecting the sun to me and it twinkles in the breeze. In this one small reflection, I have the whole sun in my yard. And now as the sun climbs the sky, many more twinkles appear; many tiny suns of the same sun.

We pretend we are these many small glimmers, that we are separate, these small sparks, dotting the earth, ignoring how we are actually the one sun split into many.

Every morning we are asked to wake up with the sunrise. Wake up, wake up.

Ever patient, the sun will continue to rise and ask us to wake up and remember who we are.