Category Archives: Arts

After a Rain – On the Spot

It is unwise for one to ramble over these mountains at any time, unless he is prepared to move with as much certainty as if he were solving a geometrical problem. A cloud may at any moment settle around him, and unless he has a compass and knows which way to go, he will be lost at once…To travel there with security, a person must know his bearings at every step, be it fair weather or foul. Thoreau, Journal, 7/8/58

Dry summer has stretched into dry fall, and today in the mountains, the much touted leaves show drought’s stress – colors are muted and many leaves are blotched with brown and crisp even before they fall to the ground. So, this morning’s rain carries with it a small sigh of relief; the ground and the woods breathe a little more easily for a while.

And I am on the edge of small absence as the pattering stops and the shallow puddles glisten a bit in the gray morning light; I have a few hours before an appointment, and I scan my map for a trail that fits those few hours. Then, having settled on an out-and-back to Low’s Bald Spot, where, if it clears, I’ll look up into the Great Gulf and at the neat pyramid of Mt. Adams and the shambling mass of its neighbor, Mt. Madison, I fill water bottles, lace up my shoes and set out.

Mts. Madison and Adams from the other side.

Mts. Madison and Adams from the other side.

How can the 8 a.m. woods be so dark? I wonder as I quick-step around faintly-shining stones. A slight breeze shakes secondary rain from the leaves; I am wet with leftover drops and, soon, with work. A long corridor of climbing stretches ahead into the gray wherever, and I drop my gaze to the ten-foot puzzle always before me and go up. It happens then: the whole little enterprise of motion and focus that is me meshes; whatever lies behind me or more than 10 feet ahead, stays there. I am perfectly present. It feels like rain after a long dry spell. “Ah,” says self, and I realize that I am smiling.

The Spot, which truly is a low one amid the high peaks, requires a hand-aided scramble up its final rocks, and, in the now-thin woods, day has broken open with light. I am, I realize, about to get more riches of reward. Clouds roll up out of the valley to my north, and then, to my west Adams and Madison ghost through the clouds. They seem impossibly tall and distant, though, if I were to abandon plans, I could be there in a few hours. Then, a giant appears – the ridge that leads up to Nelson Crag is so close it could fall on me, if the earth were to abandon principle and tumble to new arrangement. And the bright white tatters of valley cloud keep rising, keep catching the here-and-gone-and-here sun that has found a slot of blue over the Carters. Not far above the winds of a front are calling all these clouds to change, but here the breeze is faint, and even though I am wet and cooling and it is fall, I can sit back on this fresh-washed rock and watch the whole aerial show – more smiling sans thoughts.

In another season (coming soon), Mts. Adams and Madison, from Low's Bald Spot

In another season (coming soon), Mts. Adams and Madison, from Low’s Bald Spot

If a day, an enterprise, a quest, is truly blest, the way back will be equal to the way out. Just so on this morning, where somehow the wide and wild visions of cloud and mountains shrink again to the composure of the immediate and its stones and footpath. Rhythm sets up and I match it with chuffs of expressed air – all the way down I sing wordlessly and dance over and on the stones.

Equilux

It is pleasant to embark on a voyage, if only for a short excursion, the boat to be your home for the day, especially if it is neat and dry. A sort of moving studio it becomes, you can carry so many things with you. It is almost as if you put oars out at your windows and moved your house along. Thoreau, Journal, 8/31/52

Here: sunrise – 6:28 a.m.; sunset – 6:34 p.m. A few days away, light’s six-month reign will give way to night’s rise.

Getting there on another such day.

Getting there on another such day.

Floatation off the north end of Birch Island – languid, sun-on sentences punctuated by falling acorns, some of which land with a plop in the water, while others rattle the leaves, and a few pinball among the branches, making hollow comment. On the way here, I have seen nuts afloat, colonizers headed for some far shore, whole paragraphs of leaves bundled in little darkness.

A lightest breeze riffles the water, and it pushes my boat into the shore grass, which scrapes and sighs along its sides. We – my boat and I – lodge there, 6 inches above the mud, and the sun catches in the southside folds of my shirt; my northside cools. It is, except for the arrhythmic marimba of the acorns, utterly quiet. Except also, now that I am so still, or still so, for the tiny splashes of two-inch-long fish that hurry and leap around me. It could be celebration of this day, but it is not – a larger splash tells me a larger fish is fishing these shallows. Getting on with it.

Later, halfway up in a pine, I see a single white egret…mid-migration? just setting out? Once, in the same season, we saw 16 egrets in the same white pine; they looked like the flung towels of some giant, maybe summer, who had stalked off after bathing in the bay.

Empty, mostly, these islands…though from White an eagle lumps into the air, pretends to soar, lumps his wings some more, feigns a dive and turns back to his tree. So much, he seems to say, for all this work at motion; I’ll wait for something still to float by. Which I do.

It is that sort of day.

Green water, white rock - floatation.

Green water, white rock – floatation.

Someone Has to Go

All sorts of men come to the Cattle-Show. I see one with a blue hat*. Thoreau, Journal, 9/29/57.

There are days…when it pays…to break routine. Yesterday the light came to the window…just so…and I said, “someone has to go.”

The sea is only a few miles away, and yet, when I arrive, I see it is enjoying a very different day. Yes, the air has a familiar translucence – it is so-clear September – but a quick check of the water shows there’s a torrent of air in motion above. White-caps wash the bay, and there’s the always sound of restless water. The wind, still from the summer-south, insists, driving the water up bay; I will go the other way.

And that occasions a moment’s hesitation – do I want that work against this wind? But then I consider also that I can “hide” in the lee of an island chain for part of the way, and I know too that, a few hours from now, when I turn back, I will hitch a ride on the tide and the wind and waves will be at my back. Work to get out; glide home – good division of day. And now the water is simply “live”; I like live water.

Here then, because someone had to go, is a small photo gift from a midpoint of this day away – it is only the view of and from Little French Island and a few late-season beach roses; you will have to imagine the osprey-keenings, the loon-calls and the seals who grumbled their indecision about whether to give up their sun-rocks for the thin yellow boat a hundred yards away (I kept my distance and they stayed put).

May you be the next one to put on your blue hat and go.

* Note from Jeffrey Cramer: “When Thoreau presented his “Succession of Forest Trees” before the Middlesex Agricultural Society at the Middlesex Cattle Show and Ploughing Match on 20 September 1860, he began: ‘Every man is entitled to come to Cattleshow, even a transcendentalist.'”

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