This New Year

May your 2016 be like a strong branch clustered with surprising jewels along the way. 

Do you hear cackling?

I feel like Gretel who smells something delicious and then sees a lovely cottage in the woods and goes carefully toward it.  I took these this morning, December 30.

I got down on my knees sinking into the cool wet earth and took a photo to remember this impossibility.  

I say "Gretel" because I am waiting to hear a witches cackle in the coming days.

Are You Paying Attention?

The world is changing.  She shrugs her shoulders big time in China and she sneezes in Texas and she catches cold in Colorado.  Here, where I live, she seems to be banking the warm fires for so long that I actually welcome this 40F degree day today.  Even the geese seem disoriented in our river wondering what happened to the winter.  The fall was so long and so lovely that I cannot help but think we are not paying the price yet that others are paying.

We went for a walk in the nearby woods and marshland and I took a few photos that are an example of our non-winter winter.  There is not much birdsong or insect percussion in this place, but the warm air makes me think there should be.

You can hear the crackle of dead leaves and you have to be careful about pockets of wet marsh, but I have on my hiking shoes and do not worry.

So much rain and the moss has maintained is brilliant green retaining nature's compass.

The beaver is engineering the flow of the water to suit his winter home.

And this cattail looks as if it is throwing up his arms in celebration of a little bit of sunshine, at long last.

A Test?

The temperature is going to reach 70 degrees Fahrenheit on Christmas Eve.  Even the rest of the week will  be  very pleasant.  I am thankful for no snow to shovel and no ice to navigate.  Wondering what  the New Year will bring and if we are going to be tested after enjoying this unusually warm weather.

This Morning

Long before the winter's sun broke over the black horizon, just when the sky was turning its cold pink, the red-tailed hawk could be heard crying high in the sky over my house.  His piercing call was the only sound in the cold desert of the morning's silence. Was it in celebration of the new day or in sadness over the shortness of the day before solstice?

Days Waiting for Winter

I took a walk around my yard a few days ago. I don't know when winter will finally get here, but it appears we have broken any temperature records but we must have broken the record for mores days in a row above average temperature. Small bees have come out of hibernation burying themselves in these flowers and cherry blossoms are blooming in D.C. Beautiful and scary at the same time.

Christmas Red

The sunrise decorated my forest trees in red for Christmas.

At the Beach

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
                                "Dover Beach" Mathew Arnold

We went to the beach to find coloured shells
the kind that when placed to our ears
make the sound of the ocean appear,
and gathered rocks that we never would find
in the places we walked,
for most of the time.
                                     "Memories of the Beach"  David Taylor

Of lavender and pearl, umber and rose,
Of iridescent sheen, dim-shaded dun,
Of red that smoulders and of red that glows,
To lie there glistening beneath the sun,
Beside the shouting or the singing sea,
All beautiful, and empty every one.
                                 "The Beach of Shells" Edward Shanks

The Comfort of Being in Union

In Paradise there is nothing to stop the wind that flows across the Gulf of Mexico onto the white sandy beaches.  It actually races instead of flows during the late fall months driven by the warm waters of summer, dumping shells, seaweed, small sea creatures and whatever else is in its path.  It seems to want to wipe the surface of the ocean clean.  It wants to start fresh,  as do I.

Many of the worshipers at the shrine of the tropical waves hide indoors during this service, because they are suddenly afraid of the power of something as simple as moving air or perhaps afraid of how weak they are in its presence.  Small air molecules joining with surprising force in their demands can suddenly get our attention.  When they really want our attention they lift things that we cannot.

 I had the beach almost totally to myself.

The First Evening

Our arrival on Marco Island was just as the sun was setting.  We did not even unpack our car, but went directly to the beach to enjoy a cool weather sunset.  Cool weather for southern Florida but warm for those of us from the mid-Atlantic.  Breathing in and breathing out before the crush of family.