Category: Way In

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What matters most?

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“What matters most?” is a question I ask myself frequently, as I choose and rearrange priorities for how to spend my time, daily, hour by hour. Even minute by minute. It has taken sixty years for me to recognize this question’s power and necessity in my life. And I’m only just beginning to see how slippery its answers can be. The green snake was what mattered most one hot September afternoon. What you don’t see here are all the videos I took of him (or her) moving along the top of a rusty wire mesh fence between the backyard and the pasture, swaying and flexing a neon-green muscle of a body into an unusual number of curves while moving along the top of the thin wire. I only see this kind of snake in our yard once or twice a year. Every time seems like the first and makes me feel lucky. I could not read the creature’s eyes to figure out what mattered most to him (or her), but I was hoping that by keeping my distance, the answer wasn’t “avoiding me.” After a super-dry late summer, one deluge of a couple inches brought a brief respite in late September, inspiring the autumn crocuses to bloom like crazy. They are actually in the narcissus tribe and not a crocus at all, but regardless of their name, they mattered most when I saw a small bumble bee buzzing and pushing into a bloom. I remembered Betsy B., the woman who first gave me those bulbs nearly thirty years ago. She dug them up for me because she was moving far away from the perennials she’d planted over her years in Virginia. Giving them to me was a way to hold onto them, I think. They mattered on this September day because they were flowering when very little else was. And then came the rain, nearly 7 inches over a few days, which quenched the thirsty forest floor. It came from the edges of the hurricane that caused untold destruction and death in North Carolina. Choosing to notice what was near rather than worry about what I could not touch was difficult. So when the fungus flowers began to bloom in the lawn and the woods, they mattered most. The challenge of trying to use “what matters most” as a guide to my priorities is especially pronounced in Autumn, when the… Continue reading

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Precious Bugs

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It’s the time of year when spider webs waft through the air from impossible heights in the oddest of places and often capture falling leaves along the way. Of course there is a spider somewhere responsible for each of these, but what I see is a magic leaf, seeming to hang and dance but not fall, held in the air by an invisible tether. I saw two of these instances today, in very different places, so I took a picture of the second–a sourwood leaf suspended above our road. Because this September the webs I’ve run into have been few and far between. I had to remove a very scary spider from my room before I went to bed last night (not pictured). This one was of the wolf variety. Not a web-maker. More of a marauding hunter. It was tricky to get at it with the empty yogurt container (my bug removal device of choice) both because it was near the corner of the wall and because I had to move a floor lamp to reach him, which I did as carefully as I could, praying he wouldn’t move. Just a foot or so from him was a crevice he could easily hide in, between painted cinderblock wall and concrete floor (no baseboards in this room). And I had to crouch and reach without throwing a shadow across him. Slap of plastic onto wall then scrape of cardboard square sliding between plastic and wall, and he was with me traveling to a new home outside the front door. All of this happened swiftly (I’ve moved hundreds of spiders from inside my house to out over the decades I’ve lived here), but this year such encounters have been particularly focusing for me. I think it is because there are fewer of them. Insects, that is. I used to be afraid of insects. They seemed to be everywhere, and I knew nothing about them. Now, I’m seeking them out. I am thrilled to see them, mostly. Especially when they are outside, like the caterpillar pictured above, who looks like she’s wearing a fancy dress costume. Apparently she belongs to a group that has earned the title “dangerous saddleback caterpillars,” and will turn into what is unpoetically called a slug moth (about as handsome as the name implies). But I didn’t know that when I was inspired to photograph her in her… Continue reading

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Wood Thrush

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I stop my rapid steps to listen: Chattering pip-pips like laughter, Soaring songs a hallelujah chorus from angels not created in our image. The woodthrush fills the woods with more than sound, a tangible presence invisible inside the dark forest made darker by the backlight of sunset. Their melodies carry magic. They help me breathe, help me lift my arms and spread myself, tilt my chin and look up, forget what keeps me in my head. The barking of faraway dogs disappears as does the memory of the machine cutting hay this afternoon. Gradually the pip-pips cease, songs grow long pauses between, the forest quiets into twilight. And I am a body simply standing in the road. Continue reading

On the Cusp of the First Frost

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October 31st, and I’m afraid many a child will be disappointed by today’s weather for trick-or-treating. It likely won’t even hit 50 degrees, rain is a real possibility, and the winds are supposed to pick up in the late afternoon. The brilliant autumn colors are falling down, down, down as the continued drought conditions push the trees into letting go of their leaves. While Sourwood Forest is mostly about woods and wildlife, I also share part of this place with four goats: Cocoa, Bertie, Iris, and Captain Fantastic (in order of seniority). And the book I’ve been working on for the past seven years–about the woods and goats–is finally in print. So this post is pointing at that, to remind readers that this place is also an inspiring place to create. Several amazing artists contributed images to make the book visually beautiful. A few of them have websites: James Cicatko , Cathy Leather , Ted Moore, Rhea Nowak. I encourage you to check them out. If you’re interested in knowing more about the book, Contact me. I only printed a limited number, and they are not available online. Tonight the first real frost is likely to happen here at Sourwood Forest, which marks the start of my search for artists and writers who would like to be next summer’s residents, spending some time here between May and October 2024. Contact me if you’d like more information about possibilities. I chose the title after surveying over forty friends and colleagues to make a choice from five possibilities. Two of the titles got 75% of the votes, and What Holds Us Here won by a nose. I like it because the book’s content speaks to just about every way to interpret each of those words, making the title both a statement and a question. Continue reading

Pedlar River September Morning

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I am choosing a Pedlar River photo to put at the end of my book, which is about to go to print once I decide on this last image! It was a cool morning, so I braved the risk of ticks to walk down to the river and take photos, carrying my wading boots since I knew it would be low and that the best views were likely to be had from inside the river. Below are the four I’m trying to choose between. Continue reading

Here one day, gone the next

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Since the small milkweed patch finally appeared in our front garden several years ago, monarch caterpillars have been a part of September for me, and I’ve learned not to get too invested in the whole thing. That said, I am still thrilled when I first spy them (usually when they are smaller than my pinky fingernail), and I look in on them every day, amazed at how fast they can grow. But it’s hard not to be disappointed when they sometimes just disappear. I try to convince myself it must be because they have found their way to a secret location and are beginning to “hang J” in preparation for what comes next. This week I decided to photograph the current residents one morning when I was lucky enough to see four of the gaudily striped critters, quite healthy and sizable, and (in my opinion) way to close to the top of the milkweed they were feasting upon. When they reach the top and all that’s left is stem, do they climb all the way back down (some four or five feet) and proceed to crawl across the dangerous ground to climb up another stalk? I’ve never seen them on the ground or headed in a downward direction. They always seem to be moving up and very focused on eating. Today was rainy, and I wasn’t able to find any of them in my brief foray into their milkweed neighborhood. I’m going to believe that does not mean they are actually “gone” from the world. It is so metaphorically rich, this monarch life cycle, that the actuality of it can sometimes get lost in all the meaning I can assign to this particular creature’s way of being in the world. So my point here is just to document that “they were here,” that they had reached (at the time of having their pictures taken) a size that meant they were ready to pupate, to move into their next phase. I’ll post these pictures now and not speculate on the uncertain future they have already entered. That said, I’ll be looking daily in the neighborhood of my front gardens where these photos were taken for a gorgeous green chrysalis. Or maybe four. Continue reading

5 Minutes of Awe

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On the back porch last Sunday morning, I felt awe three times in under five minutes. First, from the sound of the wood thrush’s song high in the trees across the middle pasture from me. Second, from the arrival of a nuthatch, who stared at me as he stood facing downwards on the locust post waiting for the other nuthatch to finish his (or her?) turn at the suet cage hanging about five feet from where I sat. He turned his head left then right, tilting it each time. Then he faced me straight on, deciding he wasn’t afraid enough of me to change his meal plans. And third, a hummingbird flew into the scene to feast on the rhododendron blooms just off the porch’s corner.  (The pictures here aren’t from that morning, though, but from a few days later as I stood at the kitchen sink trying to photograph a very active nuthatch feeding at the same suet cage I’d watched during my minutes of awe. The awe that arose from those happenings was a feeling like I was invisible but yet not invisible, and so somehow part of everything. That kind of feeling is part of the official definition of “awe” being thrown about purposefully within psychology and health care circles these days. There’s a lot of new science supporting what we’ve known forever: that awe is good for us.) After the awe, when I was thinking about the fact that I’d experienced awe but still sitting and watching, I was happy to know that the birds, while wary, weren’t afraid of me. That made me think of the snake I’ve been seeing a bit too often in the past couple of days. I would prefer he were a bit more frightened by me. He’s a young black snake (a teenager by the size of him) who has been slithering around the back porch and sunning himself on the front patio. Too close to the house’s doors for comfort. And he’s so casual about my presence that it’s making me a little nervous. But I have enjoyed the opportunity to watch a snake move, imagine what he’s intending or how he’s responding to me, an incentive to stand there and adopt a snake’s pace—not the fleeing pace but the decision-making pace, as he chooses how to get from this point to that point. I wonder how my presence may… Continue reading

Winter in All Its Glorious Forms

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I have not written in December because I’ve been outside in the woods, through temperatures high and low, winds calm and raucous, days shortening and, just recently, beginning again to grow. That intoxicating slant of winter light drags me outside before I’ve even finished my first cup of tea and again in the afternoon when I should be staying glued to my screen for another hour. Recently, there was a cold spell. A period of below freezing temperatures for several days in a row, unlike we’d experienced for many years, it seems. I did my best to thaw the birdbaths a couple times a day to save the birds from having to fly to the creek to drink (knowing they had to conserve energy), and I put birdseed out in more places and types of feeders than ever before. And, of course, the goats had to be fed twice daily instead of once, have warm water added to their plug-in buckets (which keep water just above freezing, but not warm enough to entice them to avoid dehydration), as they munched through the hay in their net and racks at three times the usual rate. The extra outdoor work was worth it, though, for the chance to see ice art at the creeks! No way can I stay inside long enough to do any decent writing, so I’ve posted these photos (I’m too entranced by the woods, though, to even photograph anything properly..); and I’ll insert a poem from a few years back, though it requires a windy day and large white pines to picture it, something I don’t have in my photo gallery, sadly. So just imagine. Wind and the White Pine Tree It’s just another one of those days, another one of those windy days like so many others you’ve stood through. And so you just trust to your internal structure, to the joinings with neighbors below and above ground, and ride out the whims of the wind. Perhaps all will calm and you’ll still be standing, mostly whole and able to grow on. It’s in your DNA: this knowing what to do, what you can do, and when to do nothing. But there’s more to it than that. What I see is your motion inside the wind: your branches dance, along with the other trees’ branches powered by invisible air, and grace comes from how you bend to… Continue reading