North Country: Springing into a new world?

As we write this, it's almost exactly the Vernal Equinox and it's snowing, not heavily, but steadily. Welcome to Spring in our North Country. Purple finches are back at one of the feeders. Woodpeckers have been having lots of fun with one of the trees in the neighborhood. We hope, when the trunk finally lets go, it doesn't land on the road.

a woodpecker favorite

Photo by J. Harrington

What do you see when you look at today's photos: a series of various size woodpecker holes not connected to each other nor anything else; a much-abused dead tree trunk and limbs, pock-holed, growing fungus amongus? Or is it possible, with just a skosh of imagination, to see archways, doorways and entrances to other dimensions? Could the mushroom steps lead to a newer, higher, better universe? Are there tunnels through the limbs and trunks, connecting at least some of the holes, connecting us to a neverland such as Alice discovered? If you see no such possibilities, you might want to ask yourself why?

where do the holes lead?

Photo by J. Harrington

We admit that we have been aided and abetted in our thinking about and experiencing the "old, dead tree" by the chapter in Robert Macfarlane's Landmarks titled "Childish." If you haven't yet read Landmarks, please do. Macfarlane is among the more powerful and compelling writers we've found who explores the relationships among languages and places and times. We continue to wrestle with whatever linkage exists between the idea and the reality. Annie Dillard writes in "Total Eclipse," "All those things for which we have no words are lost." We wonder what that means for those, like children, with limited vocabulary but much less limited imaginations. What, also, does it mean as too many of us age, expand (if not improve) our vocabulary, and simultaneously lose access to our imaginations? Words are tools. Words cast spells through incantations. Words are squiggles on screens and sheets of paper. Words may have started as grunts or birdsong or.... Words are used to lie and cheat and steal and hurt. The Bible claims that "In the beginning was the Word." Which came first, the Word or the reality, our Words or our World?

                     World Word

By Eamon Grennan

What over the gable-end and high up under tangled cloud

           that raven might be saying to its tumble-soaring mate

or what the blackbird might intend when chattering among

           scattered breadcrumbs or what the bellowing of one cow

then another in the near field might mean remains beyond

           my ken—being all noise for which no words will manage

though all is language settling and unsettling the world

           beyond me . . . and yet there’s the dunnock in all its

dun colours at work among the small stones and patchy grass

           of the driveway and here’s the robin’s aggressive tilt

at breadcrumbs and there goes the sudden shriek

           of the blackbird . . . all alive inside the inhuman

breath-pattern of the wind trawling every last leaf

           and blade of grass and flinging rain like velvet pebbles

onto the skylight: nothing but parables in every bristling inch

           of the out-of-sight unspoken never-to-be-known pure

sense-startling untranslatable there of the world as we find it.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.