Thursday, November 10, 2022

November: storms of the season

In commemoration of the 47th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Minnesota’s Split Rock Light House will be holding a Memorial Beacon Lighting and related activities. For those unable to attend the event, a portion of the beacon lighting will be streamed live on YouTube. I would be remiss if I failed to include a link to Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting song about the wreck, so here it is.


Split Rock Light House
Split Rock Light House
Photo by J. Harrington

This week’s weather makes me glad I haven’t spent all year looking forward to the firearms deer hunting season that started last Saturday. It’s been a week of howling winds, rain, thunderstorms, I think they got some snow up north. Deer don’t like strong winds. Speaking only for myself, I never enjoyed sitting on a tree stand in the rain, but then I never had a tree stand with a roof like some of the ones I’ve seen at the edges fo several of the farm fields around here. A little bit of snow, known as “tracking snow,” is usually seen as helpful, but there’s none of that to speak of around here.


The sleeping giant (thunder bay, lake superior)

Emily Pauline Johnson 1861 – 1913


When did you sink to your dreamless sleep

Out there in your thunder bed?

Where the tempests sweep,

And the waters leap,

And the storms rage overhead.


Were you lying there on your couch alone

Ere Egypt and Rome were born?

Ere the Age of Stone,

Or the world had known

The Man with the Crown of Thorn.


The winds screech down from the open west,

And the thunders beat and break

On the amethyst

Of your rugged breast,--

But you never arise or wake.


You have locked your past, and you keep the key

In your heart 'neath the westing sun,

Where the mighty sea

And its shores will be

Storm-swept till the world is done. 



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


No comments:

Post a Comment