A Quotation for Saturday

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,

There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is a society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or all I have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot conceal." Lord Byron, George Gordon

(The first photo was taken up here by me, the second was taken by my friend Kathleen's daughter-in-law Cindy on a trip to Oregon in June of 2012).

Sunday Sunlight

I took this photo while on a ramble around the forest recently.  My eye was caught, as it always is, by how the sunlight and shade create a kind of magic and mystery.  It's one of the things I love best about living in a forest.

(The flowers are the blossoms of the Lunaria plant, commonly known as Money Plant).

Wordless Wednesday - Transformations

One

"All forests are one. They are all echoes of the first forest that gave birth to Mystery when the world began. There are two forests for every one you enter; the physical one you walk in and its echo, the one that is connected to all the other forests, with no consideration of distance or time." Charles de Lint

Old Trees

"It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon humans' hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanates from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit." Robert Louis Stevenson

Gifts From the Forest

I found this feather from a Band Tailed Pigeon last autumn (or the autumn before that, I can't remember) while walking up to my studio. I always watch for 'gifts' from the forest when ever I'm walking...sometimes even when I'm driving.

I was driving really slow with the window down (I was stuck behind a very slow moving car) when I spotted this little guy on the side of the road. I'm pretty sure this acorn was given his smiley 'hedgehog' face (anyway, that's what it looks like to me) by a squirrel biting it lightly, but I'm not one hundred percent sure that's how it happened. However it got its cute little face, I'm really glad I found it.

I suppose most people would consider these things to be junk, but I really am grateful for my little gifts from the forest and its inhabitants!

Insane Heat

The high yesterday was 75 and I thought that was crazy. Today it was 80 degrees!! And it's still April!!! The cherry tree in the above picture had buds on it two days ago, tight, little, nowhere-near-open buds. At least, I think it's a cherry tree because the blossoms look similar to a tree a friend of mine has. This was a volunteer and this is the first year it has bloomed. It's very tall for a cherry tree, but then so is her Ranier cherry tree.

Anyway, back to these insane temperatures. This time of year we're usually still getting spring snow, either heavy and wet or the consistency of popcorn. And our normal highs range from 33 to 45.

I hate this. I hate the feeling that all of nature is out of balance. We've lost over a million Ponderosa Pines in these mountains to the Pine Bark Beetle since 2001 because the warmer temperatures weakened their natural resistance to the little monsters. When we cut down the dead trees on our land (it's a fire hazard to leave them standing) we found that many were over 400 years old. It broke my heart.

I have a friend who lives along the coast of British Columbia. She said the Pine and Spruce Beetle arrived there this past summer and did quite a lot of damage, but that the trees in the interior of BC were affected even more: Millions of acres of dead trees. Millions of acres.

What kind of planet will the children of today have by the time they are adults? Will they have to show their grandchildren pictures of trees? Pictures of vast green forests, bears, mountain lions, polar bears,clear mountain streams, snow?

I hope not.