After the Rains

It has been raining hard the last few days and the sun was shining bright on the drive home. Then about 5 miles from home the sun disappeared behind the dark gray bank of clouds. Now the half moon is out; a ring is scribed around it and a planet shines next to it. The air is still and cool. There is a fire burning in the wood stove.

We are in the process of buying a new wood stove. This one is a Fisher and is old. Some say the ones with the knobs on front, like ours, are 20-25 years old. They put out a lot of particulates into the air especially compared to the new ones. One site says the old stove we have puts out 50-60 grams/hr. One of the new stoves we are looking at puts out 1.9 grams/hr. Where the older ones might be 20-40% efficient... the new ones are close to 75- 80%. At the same time we will have to pay between $1500- 2000 for one to cover our size house. As much as we want to be environmentally sound it is quite a price to shell out. We looked at solar. It actually pays out over time, but it is the initial cash outlay that's daunting. More dilemmas. I know we will wind up buying a new stove because we both love wood fires and the radiant heat. Plus, when I walk outside on a night like tonight the air is cool and tinted with the smell of wood smoke.

On a walk around the property the other day I noticed the little pond in the creek has water in it and as I was walking along the path I watched a stick move all on its own. There is a Buddhist story about a man walking along a path in the dusk and seeing a snake. The man got scared and tried to think of all different ways to get around the snake. Seeing that there was no other way, he crept slowly up to it and around it. When he was really close he saw that it was a stick. Our minds see what they anticipate seeing. For me that moving stick soon turned into a Rough Skinned Newt (T. granulosa).



This amphibian has a toxin that deters predation. They say that 1/30th of the toxin in a skin of these newts is enough to kill a healthy human adult... but it has to be ingested. Maybe they should carry a warning like McDonalds coffee: Do not swallow this amphibian it may be hazardous to your health. Some people do react to touch and contract a little dermatitis. Probably more likely is the newt is damaged from handling from a human. The oils on our hands can damage their coating. The only known predator are toxin-resistant garter snakes.


The paper birch leaves are scattered on the ground and soon they will all be gone. It is the time of hibernation as the colors fade into the soil and the land is sketched in shades of brown, gray, and green. For now the spots of yellow leaves are pretty.

Is there greed in nature?

This light graced the morning just above the hamlet of Bellfountain on Dawson Road.

Here are some images of Autumn on the land.





Does greed exist in nature? There is violence as evidenced by feathers strewn across the grass. Competitive advantage is seen in the blackberries reaching from the forest into the open field, the dominant turkeys chasing the weaker birds away from the flock, and there is the Scrub Jay out competing the Stellar Jay. But is there greed as a natural state? I've been thinking about the debacle on Wall Street and the obscene bonuses made possible by the blind largesse given out by the government (and from our hard work). In a way it is another form of competitive advantage I guess. It is just sickening to me that intelligent people who have the potential to do positive work for so many people in the world choose to be so self-indulgent.

It is the time for the bear to gather the last stores and prepare for the long sleep. In Chinese medicine I learned that it is the time of metal and a time for turning inward. At this time of my life, with the world events going as they are, I just want to turn into the cave of Aisling and not leave. To store all my food, to install solar energy and a new woodstove, then to let the world do whatever it will do. It is definitely quieter now and it would be an ideal time to just sit on the land and pretend that things aren't like they are. Iraq. Afganistan. Wall Street. Unemployment. A surging China.

In the moment of pre-dawn, as I breathe the fresh, cool, humid air everything is alright with the world. As long as I stay in the moment, avoid listening to too much NPR, and listen to the leaves fall to the ground. Life is good in those moments.

The Rainy Season

The day before yesterday it was 30 degrees and today the first fall/winter storm has come in with slightly warmer temperatures. Tonight I drove back from Portland (about 2 hours) in the dark and wet. This weather is such a common staple in the Northwest. It is refreshing and the hardened and cracked topsoil will suck up the rain- closing those surface gaps. This is the rainy season, maybe not as dramatic as SE Asia or India, but just as persistent. For many of us it is good to feel this familiar change and for people new to the region they get surprised that this gray and wet can go on (not everyday) and on and on.

I've discovered two new words: bricolage and bricouler. I like the definitions that are in Wikipedia: "the construction or creation of a work from a diverse range of things which happen to be available, or a work created by such a process. The term is borrowed from the French word bricolage, from the verb bricoler – the core meaning in French being, "fiddle, tinker" and, by extension, "make creative and resourceful use of whatever materials are to hand (regardless of their original purpose)"; in contemporary French the word is the equivalent of the English do it yourself, and seen on large shed retail outlets all over France. A person who engages in bricolage is a bricoleur." This seems to be an aspect of which I'm quite versed. The counterpoint to this is the linear engineer... something which I need more development.

Nature is a bit of both I think. It is something about how it all seems to fit together like a coherent puzzle. There is a structure to it but there is also a construction of whatever appears. The blackberries and English Ivy are invasive species and creep into any piece of sunlight they can find. They have intruded upon the native plants. Yet there is a coherence with their presence. As we clear out the blackberries there is an increased amount of space and openness. This is something that we want but for the small songbirds, it may mean a loss of protective habitat. By clearing out the berry thicket we create more open space for the deer to wander through, but do we create an unsafe environment where the Cottontail Rabbits are easy prey for the bobcats?

Some might say that I spend too much time thinking about these things- I think that people spend too little time thinking about the consequences of their choices and subsequent actions. As we constantly act from our self-centered needs, what are the consequences of our actions? The main thing that distinguished us from animals with less developed brains is our ability to reflect more fully and respond thoughtfully and act judiciously.

Tonight I gave a talk at the Northwest Coaches Association meeting in Portland (2 hours from here). It is a perfect venue for selling and marketing my coaching and training services. However, I was more interested in talking about my life experience and just being who I am in life. At this point of middle age (I'll be 54 this weekend) I'm tired of trying to be things other than who I am or trying to perform the way that a public presenter "should" be. It is so much effort. There is a quote from William James that comes to mind:

"I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible, loving, human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of pride."

I find that I am more interested in photographing the small things- the patterns up close rather than the big landscapes. I've come to the end of many weekends being occupied and a week in California to help some people build a retreat cabin. On my way there I wrote the following in my journal while parked at Scott Mountain Summit in the Siskiyous:
"...snow thinly covers pine and cedar. the redness and gray manzanita etch lines in the forest. a jay calls and there is the persistent mid-tone background of wind accompanying the stillness and the percussive beat of water droplets striking stone and needles. the Pacific Crest Trail is a quilt of orange pine needles and s sugar coating of snow.
"... I see and think of the writing and how I experience the snow through the lens of Gore Vidal talking to me from his book (on CD in the truck), Point to Point Navigation. His words, viewpoint, become the filter, it becomes the dictionary and grammar text from which these words flow onto paper. Just as he states how life is forever shaped by cinema... that people live life based on the images of cinema. I enter into the Trinity drainage, to a place where direct experience of the moment is deified and enthroned. It is the experience of warmth, smell, sounds, and images based on my years and years of experience driving over this summit. It is not just the experience of this present moment. It is tempered by my feeling for wilderness; sculpted and edited by my world of wilderness. The PCT summons from the dead my relationship with Bellingham Billy and the many experiences with first snowfall. The sounds of my boots crunching and the sight of my boot imprints are filtered through my emotions about past adventures. This is not like a child's first experience of snow but through the experiences of a lifetime..."

I'm back, it is late. May your journeys be fruitful.