Walk this morning, 8:00am:
Crossed road into brown sunlit brambly woods, low trees and tangles - easy to navigate in winter - though there is still purple in the matriarchal vines and they do still grab - as if to say, I've something to tell you. Sat astride log over one of three meanders of stream, rushing meltoff with lacy borders of ice on either side - listened to the sound, running water sound. Flushed deer as I got up - followed it further across loops of stream - down a deer path, very narrow, snacked on by thorns all along, to a place where the deer must have "ascended bodily into heaven" (Annie Dillard) as the path ended at a wide swath of deep stream. Tracked back in sunlight getting warmer to road, crossed over and down mirror alleyway past Dan's studio to ice patches - one, frozen solid over the rope swing, so I swung and skated at same time. Then another patch, not so frozen: clear; I stepped on embedded cinder blocks over it, heard voice of the ice - a pleasing note of shift and strain. Squatted down, looked closely into still faces of the leaves - oak, maple - in watery grave. Then noticed ice bugs - translucent shrimp-like things - darting in and out among the leaves. What in the world? They like that cold. Back along path to field, lay on disc, arched back and round for the sun, now warm and pleasant. Walked to the middle of the field in surprisingly few steps, turned back to slope of woods rising up from the field - and saw that it was the show. I was the audience. What a transcendent slope of earth and dead leaf and bark, browns and browns.
This week's rite is from the Dragon's Egg in Ledyard, CT, and the mirror alley is a magical through-the-looking-glass installation by Marya Ursin.
