Friday, August 31, 2012

END OF AUGUST

East Inlet - See the deer?
It was the end of August and time for our annual pilgrimage to the Great North Woods.   The days were warm and sunny under a brilliant blue sky.  We saw deer, otters, loons, hawks and harriers, fox and one very large, very dead porcupine.

We've been coming to northern New Hampshire since the summer of 1985. It's a place we love for its wildlife, vast stretches of forest, and its waterways. 

Midweek we had a surprise shower, a real drencher, and we ended up sitting it out in the car.  We had just enough time to paddle to the landing before the bog rocked with whitecaps and wind-driven rain.

After that storm, dense fog covered the waterways in the early mornings.  The temperatures of water, air, and land were shifting, changing, signaling an end to summer.

Big Brook Bog -- very early morning
On our final morning, we paddled Big Brook Bog at dawn.  Our kayaks slipped into gray and we lost sight of one another almost immediately.  It was otherworldly -- silent but for the splash of my paddle in water.  

I moved forward cautiously, listening for the tell-tale sounds of moose or deer.  Nothing. Nothing but vague shapes slipping in and out of the mist.  

It was the storyteller's dream!


Faintly, a tussock of grass and scrubby shrubs formed in the mist and fog.  It was then we knew the Trickster had played his hand and caught us in a terrific joke. We laughed and howled, and most likely, woke every living thing on water and land.

It was a very different sort of dream and magic!

And out of the fog appeared ... pink flamingos?         

Friday, August 10, 2012

RESTRINGING THE BEADS


Words pour across the page,
spill over the edge,
like so many beads from a broken
cord, falling from my neck.

They roll above wide pine boards,
lodge in wooden grooves
like wayward thoughts, I retrieve them
missing one, now two.

So much like beads from a shattered 
strand, the words shift and change
restrung, refigured, recombined,
pattern, color, rhythm, line ---
what I see, redefined.