so spaketh my sage mountains

"Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day."
- A. A. Milne via Winnie the Pooh

Touched down in Utah just long enough to hike to Secret Lake, catch a Modest Mouse show and dine at Takashi (my favourite sushi restaurant on the planet) as well as catch up with some of my favourite *people* on the planet! It was a lovely break... full of whispers from the mountains I so revere... the ones I pilgrimage to and try to heed whenever they send me potent rumblings about my potential next steps.

Am in New York City now... arrived yesterday... and already life is as weirdly manic as ever... but this leg is more optimistic... am wondering if the river is right - that I shan't worry about lost time, nor write off things simply because they did not happen yesterday.

Photo is one I took from my night hike to Secret Lake just above Alta ski resort... do you see that one lone light in the sky?? It's Venus! x

Uxbridge and What I Found There...

Perhaps you remember, last year, I journeyed to the far-flung place of west west London known as Uxbridge. And I stumbled upon this magical window filled with birds.

Well, for whatever reason - actually, for a very specific whatever reason: a book I'd perused on rituals at the local university library - was calling me back. So I put myself on the Metropolitan line and didn't get off till the last stop.

And as I walked back from the library, having failed to locate the book that inspired my journey, there was the window and there were the birds, just as they were - only one year later - as if nothing had happened at all.

Some things are so comforting like that.

Pictures follow. Enjoy!


"What do you think she's looking at Roger?"


"I don't know, Simon. Well, I mean, us, obviously."


"I'm going to stare her down."


Still staring: "Well strange lady? Is this going to become a ritual?"

A Surrealist's Grand Canyon

Contrary to how I may sometimes come across on this blog, I do not always go skipping through life with the carefree ease of the freest of free spirits. I am not entirely unflapped by uncertainty, unconcerned with logistics, or ready to accept whatever comes my way with little more than a shrug of nonchalance.

Case-in-point, this post was written, fine-tuned, and published hours ago. But thanks to a computer fluke, together with dash of stupidity on my part, the whole thing, each and every word, right down to the last apostrophe, was erased. When it really sunk in that I would have to compose what you're reading now from scratch, I nearly threw my laptop out the window.

When the above picture was taken, I was similarly out-of-sorts. I'd spent the entire afternoon at Moby's "Teany" tea shop near Neals Yard doing research and trying to straighten out a plot for my near and not-so-near future. Despite the upbeat techno music, and my best attempts to talk myself into feeling some optimism for my plans, I left the place in low spirits.

I strolled into the evening, looking downward at the sidewalk and the general state of things. But then, as I turned a corner onto a larger street, my gaze was drawn upward, above the darkened walls of the towering buildings to the sky in-between, showcasing pastel clouds and swooping birds.

The celestial scene, so luminous in contrast to the urban gloom below, seemed like a gentle proclamation from the heavens. A simple reminder, quietly saying that the best way to avoid feeling down, is, almost always, to look up.

(The moral of this story: maybe this post turned out better than the first version anyway.)

April Fool's: A Tree Captures the Moon

As seen walking down City Road from Islington to Old Street tonight. Reminds me of the children's tale where a sick princess wants the moon brought to her. She insists that the lunar orb is a golden disk no bigger than her thumbnail, and can easily be plucked out of the tree branches where it gets stuck every night.

And thus, we usher in my favorite month.

"They Didn't Know They Were History . . ."

It's what Kasey said to me as we mused about the historic peoples who'd meandered down the same ancient path we were on, perhaps musing about those who'd walked it before them, not realizing their own footsteps would fade into the history of the landscape. And there we were, plodding along, making the tracks of our era, marveling at a past we would soon be part of, the idea of taking our place there as incomprehensible to us as it was to them.




We were in the Cotwolds, a region of damp foggy fields, hilly forests, and relic villages in England's countryside. We stayed the night on a farm built hundreds of years ago, tromped through pastures alongside craggy stone fences in need of mending, and crept down a darkened tree-canopied path of yore. We saw the old, the really old, and the present all blur together in the dense misty air. It's a setting that makes you understand the meaning of timelessness.






Perhaps that's why so many myths and legends hail from England's rural provinces. In wandering about the green windscape, the otherworldly kingdoms of J. R. R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis appear sensible; a natural outgrowth of the scenes that inspired them. Pastoral Britannia is a world where curtains rustle in bygone manors, gates swing open by forces unseen, beckoning passersby into restful graveyards, and names like "Rose Cottage" or "Barnclose" are written in fairy-like script on ethereal dwellings with wooden doors festooned by golden knockers shaped like maidens' heads. Altogether, it does seem enchanted.

As I traipsed about these mythical hinterlands, preoccupied with how time folds over itself, the sections so much less segregated than we think, a quote from C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, kept springing to mind, which I will leave you with -- as well as a photograph of Kasey that I took at the end of our last hike. It looks to me that she's standing at the outer edges of a wardrobe leading to Narnia, or at the threshold of a keyhole, contemplating very Alice-like, if she should cross through to the other side. Or maybe it's just a picture of a girl in a drippy tunnel, about to reenter the nebulous world of the Cotswolds. It is all much the same thing.

“But do you really mean, sir,” said Peter, “that there could be other worlds - all over the place, just round the corner - like that?”

“Nothing is more probable,” said the Professor

Last Glance at My Native Expanse

This is the valley I've been looking down into since I was a child. Especially then, I could stare at this view from early evening well into the dark night, mesmerized by the dots of light symbolizing life that would appear; great masses of energy, each one representing, what I thought at the time, were surely millions of lives, rushing about, or merely existing, causing such a stir of twinkling over the landscape in doing so.

Given that I leave tomorrow for parts unknown, and my proclivity for wanderlust in general, it seems a bit counter-intuitive, but I never once wondered what lay beyond this horizon. I was too busy contemplating everything that came before it.

Nothing has changed in this respect. When I glanced outside tonight and saw the fuzzy oranges and pools of blue start to graze the mountains, I breathed a joyous sigh. For a few marvelous minutes, none of my thoughts strayed beyond the view at hand.

When the moment passed, a smile befell my lips and glinted my eyes. And I thanked my life-filled valley for such a beautifully suitable going-away present.

Cabin Life

I long for my own place in the midst of the woods. Evergreens crowding the view. The faint smell of a popping fire. Me in my usual spot: chocolate leather love seat, green cashmere blanket, warm mug in hand, mesmerized by falling snow. It would feel impenetrably safe, awash in contentment; like home.



As I sat by the fire at Daniels Summit Lodge in Utah, I started flipping through a book on the coffee table that seemed to offer some insight into this longing.

Daniel Mack's Log Cabin Living is a montage analyzing the soul of these rustic structures and why they have such a romantic hold on people. Pages of misty images and enchanting quotes support his musings on the connection cabins have to ghosts and fairies. He writes that retaining the shape of a log, rather turning it into lumber, preserves not only its beauty but locks in the spirit of the tree. A cabin is the glorification of nature, rather than man's triumph over it. Mack even suggests further glorifying the natural world by writing a bit of haiku: the inspiration for my two previous entries.



I sat pouring over Log Cabin Living till I was pulled away for dinner. I'd really only had the chance to skim it, which was not nearly enough. So when I got home I pulled up the title on Amazon. The sole reviewer essentially accused the book of being scattered and having bloated prose that delved too much into mystical aspects of cabin life without providing enough instruction on how to assemble one (the precise reasons, of course, that made me like it).

Poor dear. When it comes to the mysterious wonder of cabins, she's obviously missing the magic.

Snowshoe Haiku Part II

(today's poem by Anne Spice)



Cold start, hot with fret.



More beauty to see than path.





The last leg?



Endless.



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anne Spice's Haiku Deconstructed



My good friend Marcus says he "always sprints to the finish." For me, the view of the finish line is usually my signal to start walking. In the case my snowshoeing excursion with my dad and sestra K on Sunday, we weren't quite certain of the trail's end, but no matter, we set on it happily.

Like a good haiku poem the first five syllables of the path were attention grabbing. Prettiness was everywhere, chill kept our body temperatures in check, and we were so busy taking pictures I was certain we'd not have our fill of actually experiencing the scenery (the reason I despise photographic intrusions) before the journey was over.



By the middle seven syllables we'd settled into the poem of our trail. Bantering back and forth, pausing now only to point out the truly unique and extraordinary, breathing and enjoying the exchange of warm for cold air.



Those last five syllables hit suddenly, almost without warning. The sun was in danger of setting, we'd lost a sense of certainty that we were on the correct path, and without knowing it till then, we were tired. Our steps became heavy, dogged, and dragging. Without a finish line in even the remote distance, I barely wanted to walk, let alone sprint. I dawdled along, carrying my coat, then my gloves, with passing fantasies of carrying my hat and sweater; the exertion was making me overheated despite the cold. An eternity of minutes after when I thought our trek was surely close to over, it actually did end.

And I thought it had all the makings for haiku: nature, no rhyme (or reason?), a lovely beginning, mostly led down a pretty little line, then, bam, the ugly twist, pithy with truth and insight.

Marathon on Snowshoes in Haiku

(all poetry by Matsuo Basho)



A snowy morning--
by myself,
chewing on dried salmon.



A field of cotton--
as if the moon
had flowered.




What luck!
The southern valley
Make snow fragrant.




On a journey, ailing -
my dreams roam about
over a withered moor.



When the winter chrysanthemums go,
there's nothing to write about
but radishes