From the Farthest Shore

Ursula K. LeGuin's third novel in the classic Earthsea trilogy holds these pearls, which I gather to me now.
"It is time to be done with power. To drop the old toys and go on. It is time that I went home. I crave to walk on the mountain, the mountains of Gont, in the forests, in the autumn when the leaves are bright. There is no kingdom like the forests. It is time I went there, went in silence, went alone. And maybe there I would learn at last what no act or art or power can teach me, what I have never learned."

"A kind of weariness of dread, of waiting for the worst, grew in Arren all day long. Impatience and a dull anger rose in him. He said, after hours of silence, "This land is as dead as the land of death itself!"
"Do not say that," the mage said sharply. He strode on a while and then went on, in a changed voice, "Look at this land; look about you. This is your kingdom, the kingdom of life. This is your immortality. Look at the hills, the mortal hills. They do not endure forever. The hills with the living grass on them, and the streams of water running... In all the world, in all the worlds, in all the immensity of time, there is no other like each of those streams, rising cold out of the earth where no eye sees it, running through the sunlight and the darkness to the sea. Deep are the springs of being, deeper than life, than death..."
He stopped, but in his eyes as he looked at Arren and at the sunlit hills there was a great, wordless, grieving love. And Arren saw that, and seeing it saw him, saw him for the first time whole, as he was.
"I cannot say what I mean," Ged said unhappily.
But Arren thought of that first hour in the Fountain Court, of the man who had knelt by the running water of the fountain; and joy, as clear as that remembered water, welled up in him. He looked at his companion and said, "I have given my love to what is worthy of love. Is that not the kingdom and the unperishing spring?"
"Aye, lad," said Ged, gently and with pain.
They went on together in silence. But Arren saw the world now with his companion's eyes and saw the living splendor that was revealed about them in the silent, desolate land, as if by a power of enchantment surpassing any other, in every blade of the wind-bowed grass, every shadow, every stone. So when one stands in a cherished place for the last time before a voyage without return, he sees it all whole, and real, and dear, as he has never seen it before and never will see it again."

November's gift

The earth in late November is transmuted, or simply muted, by the cold--no longer snapping sharply with the sudden shock of early autumn, but penetrating deep into the bones of the ground and settling there in a long persistent throbbing.
Grass bleaches, showing the raw earthen colors beneath, ochre, gray, and brown beds laid bare on the hillside, and trees assume their purple silhouettes, skeletal finery slender and tall against the mountains' shadow.
November is life turning over in bed and dreaming of the bones of the earth.
Not black-and-white, not technicolor, this dream is filled with sepia tones, faded textures, and nostalgia for the liveliness of summer. Clay and slate predominate in a once-vibrant landscape, violet and charcoal populate shadows that pooled in summer with deepest green.
"Purple mountains majesty and amber waves of grain" were not the mountains and fields of late November. These mountains are far from cartoon, the purple a silent and waiting color, the wisdom of the bare trees written on the hills, grief at the season's end tempered with the maturity of a landscape that endures the test of winter, scrupulously saving to emerge again in spring. The stubble and straw remaining reveals the plow's furrowed tracks, script of a different story, what people have made of the land, their conversation with or their conversion of the earth, schooling it to articulate careful rows of corn, silky tops waving, or whispering seas of alfalfa mingled with the hushing of grasses. November winds have no reeds of grass to caress. Nobember winds go hungry and gnaw bitterly at the land. November's grace is tarnished silver, precious metal weathered by the ravages of time. This time of change and lengthening shadows does not yield up its secrets easily, and all yield to the relentless turning of the wheel.

weather report

The rain that pattered through this November day was the kind of rain I always write about, the rain I add to a scene if it needs the grace and inward turning of reflection, that extra whooshing of a passing vehicle or the eloquence of dripping clothing as it dries, slung over a chairback. Spattering my windowpane, beating a gentle tattoo on the roof above my low ceiling, whispering to me as I lie in bed, this rain makes a space in my life around the sheltering roof. In rain the aromas of the earth come rising up to blend in endless conversation around each inhaled breath, and I stand sniffing like a dog, tracking down the experience of the weather. Expressive, gentle, everywhere at once, this rain is a miracle filling five-gallon plastic buckets left in the driveway.

So Winter Begins

This is a time for remembering, as the first snow falls to the ground, as the winter wraps me in close in deep folds of cloth. A time for turning inward into the heart, beyond the rattle of beech leaves still clinging palely gold, rasping on their branches, the last sensory organs of a dried up season, the last glory and color of a changing perspective. A time for the stores of memory to unwind, a time to examine each garment for holes that would let in the cold, a time to shore up the foundations and the structures that support each of our beings through the long night. This is a time to sit by the fire and tell the story so that we remember who we are, and where we are going. In the dark one's identity is in question, in ways it would never be under the plain illumination, the clear brightness of day. A time of endurance and strength has come, a time of waiting while plans we have dreamed lie asleep still, waiting for us to wake up into them as to a new spring. A time that tests our preparation and our dedication, that seeks out the weak places in us and cracks us open in all our flaws, right there on the icy hillside. In this time, all our acorns must be in, and the long long arms we stretch beyond our valleys to distant lands be pulled back. We are small in winter, small and close, and we keep the heat in but the cold outside of us, and we know when to keep moving, and sometimes we stay still. And in the space where there are no cricket voices, that breath space of cold, ice cavity of a silence instead of a chest, where billowing steam on the breeze replaces the effervescence of a butterfly's lazy trace, there we hear our blood pound through hot vessels, there we hear the clear ringing of the mountain voices, a raven's startle.
I sit and I remember. I remember how the mountains never felt lonely, on those gray blank days when they were wrapped in snowy blankets. Quiet but purposeful, the mountains bowed to receive their caps. It was beauty on a scale only my heart could conceive of, large in the child's chest that housed it. I would tromp along willingly in the wake of its tug, my boots flopping in time with my flouncing scarf and windmilling arms, mittens securely attached. I didn't know why the resonant chords of the mountains, the fact of their presence, laid bare against the snow, should leave such a welling sadness within me, so solemn for an eight-year-old experiencing the weight of the world. The enormity of the love I felt consumed me without outlet, I could not relate it on a human level, nor understand it. I was simply covered, like an avalanche. I found myself running, running, struggling through snowdrifts, wading when it became deeper and entered my boots, urgently heading somewhere, collapsing in the blank hysteria of an empty field, white as a page, my footsteps laid out behind me. Those footsteps proved the pinnacle of my grief, that I would move a tiny mouse pinned to the land, so removed from the rolling vastness of the mountains I longed for, encompassed but never encompassing. I sought the memory I now hold, memory of flight. Memory of my true sight of the world, my falcon's eyes, with which I envisioned all laid out before me, beat wings with which I gave thanks for all laid out beneath me. A hopeless, sweet child I struggled in utter confusion, barraged by the senses I once knew how to make sense of, fledgling in freefall, not yet knowing to spread my wings. The mountains received my keening and echoed back my cries to the crisp, falling snow.

It's just another task, another tidying up.
Like pulling up last season's weeds,
Ripping out the eyes I saw with in
the summer, waving on their long stalks.
This movement is a turning, an effort
around the axis of the year, as I
balance an egg-shape of transformation--
of space inside me. If hope's a
feathered thing, I cannot yet tell
whether this shell contains a bird.
But my first inclination is to
another realm, glittering, airy
with the carapaces of insects
irridescent in the day that dies.
Who kept the long memory of ages
would know the fields of autumn
and call them with their truest title:
birthplace of the dragonflies.

out-standing in my field

The plant that nightly makes meadows smell sweet is rightly named fragrant bedstraw, along with purple and pink vetch clinging to tall grass stalks full of grain, and daisies waving gently in the breeze, campion forming white pillowy clouds, and elecampagne sweet and low to the ground. Clover awash in white and red, and strawberry peeking from low-growing beds. Black-eyed susans and loosestrife, buttercups too, and parsnip and goutweed, goldenrod, alfalfa, dandelion, morning glory, aster, and the twinkling silver coming from the underbellies of waving leaves on the small aspens growing casually, five feet from the edge of the field, as if no one would notice their encroachment.

The sound of home is the rustle blue-green of these leaf beings on a summer night. A creature sound. They are tall and have stood there ever since I can remember. Can they remember me? I ask. I am a wild one, a small bark scrambler with barked shins, scratches where I scrabbled up the trunk, perfectly perching high above a burbling river bed. This is what the trees remember, my almost still gaze, blood pounding as I crouch, precious gasps as I wonder at the set of day, elated and pleased to be several dozen feet higher than usual as if I had gotten away with something.

My heart has always been in the heart of a certain field, a low point on the land but an open one from which the sky is apparent, and the nearby mountains make their presence known, the funny one shaped like an anvil. An itch that I've had since I was small urges me to run towards open sky, and standing here, I can see wide vistas. A glitter, the light reflecting off a metallic angel, that pilot and I the only ones who know the secret of this sky, its freedom. You and me, buddy. You and me. I don't envy him, whoever he is. He has to look at his instruments, and focus on work, and is surely above the brilliant color display. I in my field see it all pass before me. Like one of my trees, my glory is in watching the world passing by and furthering, becoming. Who else will take the time to notice? If I do not stand out in the field and gaze into this stretch of sky, my stretch of sky, with weather passing across the canvas in a brilliant ever-changing show of wonder, if I do not stand here, will someone else?

The colors of home are the light on hills at evening. How can green become so pink before it all goes dark blue? The clouds on up through the stratosphere each in their turn follow suit in a gentle blending motion. It is suddenly not fair that every sunset has been painted as if only in one moment, when sunsets are temporal events, changing from one moment to the next, now it is the most beautiful, no, now, now, now, until it's blue in gray or is it gray in blue? and I can no longer tell the clouds from the sky nor distinguish the patterns of the leaves and the dew brushes cool against my scraped shins and I turn my steps for home because the day is gone.

A Longer Trail for some

But I enjoyed the 30.8 miles of it that I hiked, in the best company possible. I had all sorts of worries and personal concerns that melted away with the first mile and a half of uphill incline. Nothing like straining at your backpack straps and wondering whether you will keep breathing in a minute or if your boots are actually crushing your toes to jelly, to drive away worries about things like what you're doing for the rest of your life. And oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, I found that what I was doing for the next few days at least was beating a pretty hot pace over and across the Long Trail with my friends, and it didn't matter what appointments I had made, or what I might think my parents might not approve of, or what serious thing I needed to sort; worrying wasn't going to fix any of that anyhow. My problems didn't melt, but I packed them away when I packed my backpack, and I conveniently left them on the shelf at home, along with other things that were too heavy or too useless to take with me. I needed to travel light. Getting things done turned out to be the order of business, and the first step to finishing is, well, the first step. The dao has never been so sweaty, heart-racing, rocky, and rewarding. All around me, every step of the way all I had to do was stop, and look around at the cathedral of the forest canopy and the velvet moss carpet and the weird mushroom priests. Any moment of the trail contained the whole of the experience and I wasn't afraid I'd miss any of it, because it was all around me. I didn't hurry because I thought I'd be left out, instead I took my time. What fell into place was my perception. I absorbed the mountain-ness from the mountains. I asked where my roots were, why did I choose this place, these structures and people, what led me to the path I now walk? I looked long into my own memories. I looked long across the view, and into the daydream of the mountain. The lighthearted dream of summer, and a deeper sense of well-being and purpose, a way of being, a -ness that grows like mountains do, older all the time. I laughed and bantered along the trail. I settled, like the mountain settles, into an understanding of myself as I am, as I am forming. The seed of the mightiest mountain is a single grain of sand. And if I build it out of weekend hikes, hands of cards, bunches of flowers, a really great porch and shade with the summer sun through the leaves, instead of church suppers and hook-rugs and big, sweet dogs and sweeter maple toast, I still might live to ninety like Grandma Frances. The secret is just living one day at a time. I just added a pebble today. I'm in the business of mountain-building, so excuse me if I don't take some time off. If I ever stopped, how would this mountain get built? I have the most lovely sense of not wanting to step out of my self and miss a bit of my life as it goes by. I deserve it and I will savor it. If every day can be as satisfactory, as filled with endorphins and fellowship and silent, quiet spaces in the cool and the green, I shall feel fortunate indeed.