Heaven Cloaked with Earth

Up early, the sun just clearing the tips of the stately hemlocks in the east,
I venture out into the crisp air, now redolent with the delicious smell of damp earth and tender grass.

As I fill the feeder for the stout-hearted little birds that are my winter companions,I see the first male goldfinches, magically transformed from their drab olive and brown into bright canary yellow plumage. They dart about the grey branches quite conspicuous in their new attire.

And then I hear it… the most melodious sound in the world to my ears, the first song of the wood thrush. It is not complete, the cascading trill that transports me to heaven has not been added. It is early yet and practice will perfect it.
How sweet is this season called Spring! For this moment in time, everything is perfect and I am stopped dead in my tracks savoring it.

I am currently reading an insightful little book called The Exquisite Risk, Daring to Live an Authentic Life. Don’t you love when somehow you find yourself in synchronistic harmony and the perfect comment, thought, or reading magically appears to confirm what you are already experiencing?!

The author of this book is poet Mark Nepo and the chapter I opened to this morning after coming in was called “Heaven on Earth”. He starts it with this quote from a letter written to a friend by Fra Giovanni Giocondo in the 16th C.


“Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty beneath its covering that you will find earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage, then, to claim it.”


Mark Nepo adds “While happiness might be the momentary alignment of what we want with what happens, joy is the fleeting, though slower, sense of feeling our connection to everything with nothing in the way. While happiness is the bud opening on the branch, joy is feeling the entire tree… feeling the root lengthen as the bud opens. And so joy is feeling Heaven on Earth. And April is not the cruelest month but the most promising.”


Feeling our connection to everything, with “nothing in the way”, is a goal worth pursuing…
Wishing you moments of glimpsing your own heaven “cloaked in earth” today…

Early Spring Gladdens All

Here in the wooded hills of New England, signs of Spring are arriving daily.
Sunny skies have condensed the snow pack and metal sap buckets festoon the gnarled old maple trees.
New fangled plastic tubing in aqua blue and electric purple race through the gray and white woods like a Christo installation and deliver gallons of freely flowing sap into aluminum tubs. Sugar houses have had vats continuously boiling for sometime now, producing glorious amber colored syrup, the nectar of the Yankee gods…
Our dirt road is as thick and sticky as brownie batter and if you aren’t mindful you can find yourself swerving into a quagmire or losing a boot, as it is literally sucked off your foot on your way to the mailbox. Mud season is indeed upon us.
A huge V formation of jubilantly honking geese passed overhead this morning winging their way North. This is the sign I await at every winter’s end.
Yesterday in the valley it was a picture-perfect first day of Spring. Blue skies, bright sun and 71 degrees had winter weary locals stumbling outside in shorts and sunglasses in droves. The sidewalks of Northampton were packed with jubilant souls sipping coffee, listening to street-corner musicians and collectively
celebrating the return of the sun. What an amazing joie de vivre permeated the atmosphere.
Mother Nature could still throw us a curveball, as many snowstorms have manifested in late March but we all hope she retreats as a lamb. The roaring lion and sleet and wind escorted her in a most dramatic entrance.
Another change of season is at our door and the geese call us out of our dormant state to once again embrace the adventure of living…
A winter weary chorus of all living creatures answers a resounding yes…
Can you hear us?
Happy Spring to you wherever you may be!

Awakening in Narnia

It is day four of the first major blizzard to impact our area in this new decade.
Living in the hills of New England is a bit like bordering the Land of OZ.
Quite often throughout the year you awaken in your familiar bed only to arise
and realize that you have arrived “somewhere else” overnight.
This is heightened to almost surreal proportions when your home is surrounded by woodlands along a centuries old dirt road.
The dense and sticky snow manages to transform every delicate branch into feathery plumes seemingly strewn overnight by a fairy-tale snow goose.
When I opened the door this morning to greet the gathering goldfinches swarming the empty feeder, I found myself in Narnia…
The subtle but dramatic fluctuations in solar light through the opaque cloud cover are hard to describe. It creates a dramatic stage set of a white on white world.
All is still and then huge dollops of artfully stacked snow surrender to gravity and silently plop to the ground. A fiery red squirrel shoots like a flame through the lacy branches leaving curtains of snowflakes in his wake. A stately pileated woodpecker calls out from the staghorn sumac where he delicately nibbles the snow-capped velvet flowers.
My tired arms ache at the thought of clearing the path to the door again… but for now I allow myself to merge with the silence, the sublime stillness, the living poetry of Nature.
Be warm and well wherever you may be…

Celtic Tradition Alive in New England

Here in the hills of New England it has been brilliantly cold.

Brilliant in the clarity of starlight in the ink black sky and in the reflection of
the largest full moon of the year reflecting off the snow.

We have shivered at seeing temperatures in the single digits and knowing the howling wind actually has us in the negative degrees. Into this brutal weather new lambs are being born in farms throughout our community. Water is gurgling under the ice covered brooks and the days are indeed getting longer.


During ancient times throughout the Celtic World (Ireland, Brittany, Wales, Scotland, Isle of Man, Cornwall, Moravia) the depth of winter ended not with melting snow, but with melting hearts. The community celebrated the warmth and fire of Brighid – force for life, growth and regeneration - as a way of preparing the way for warmer times, and to step out of the darkest time of the year.


This time is known as "Imbolc" (ihm-olhk, meaning "ewe's milk"), traditionally falls at the full moon near when the lambs are born. It will be celebrated in Vermont on the evening of January 30 – sundown January 31(Feb 1-2 sundown to sundown in other parts of the world).


Michael Billingsley of the Irish Spiritual Heritage Association, is a prominent researcher in ancient traditions of the Celts and leads Béltaine trips to Ireland every spring. He has been offering opportunities to participate in this seasonal ritual in the Brattleboro area for seven years. In his poetic words he elaborates on the symbolism of ewe’s milk and what it offers in this dark and frozen time.


“There is a different, more subtle kind of "ewe's milk" loose in the
world - warm and trickling - sliding between the rocks and grains of soil - enlivening the seeds that have lain dormant, and quickening the sap that has been stuck frozen near the roots of trees like maple and birch. This warm trickle that informs and connects and enlivens and holds... this small ever-present Fire of Life is the vivid flame of Brighid sparkling and brightening and inspiring the coming year of creativity, imagination, growth and evolution." We are invited to keep the warmth of Brighid's flame in our hearts to share with the world.


"She is the Life that enlivens all. She is that life that seeps up through springs bubbling from the earth, and in the gurgles of small eddies under the ice. She is that warmth within our own hearts and cells, who makes the world in us come alive... and frees us from anything stuck and cold and frozen. We are connected through this Brighid-ness and supported by her.”


For more information on the Irish Spiritual Hertitage Association visit www.irishspiritualheritage.org


The old ritual involves a conscious letting go of emotional rigidness that has developed during the dark and cold that is restricting us from a sense of well being. It suggests letting go of old habits, ideas, fears to make way for new growth. Sounds very much like our more familiar New Year’s Resolutions doesn’t it, but at a deeper level.


May we all find freedom from personal fears and leap with joy like the frolicking lambs despite the darkness that still gloams…

Winter Solstice

A radiant sun, in cloudless blue, shimmers across the crystalline snow
that now lays claim to the land.
It enervates and elevates the mood of all living things, despite the bitter cold.
Here in the deep woods we have been experiencing winter for a few weeks now
despite today’s official start.
The Eastern seaboard of the U.S. had record breaking snows over the weekend. Washington, DC was all but closed down.
But here in the wilds of New England we just bring in more wood and stoke the
fire that is crackling in the woodstove.
All are very mindful of the turning of the season, as darkness now falls by 4 pm.
Both man and beast will easily align in rhythm with this longest night… and drift into peaceful slumbers.
All night revels and bonfires of old will be postponed by the general populace,
in lieu of holidays to come.
But it is indeed a special gift for such a Solstice day as this…
The sun will make a glorious exit before the darkness falls.
And the wheel of the year will turn and again we have come full circle.
Most of us will happily release the economic challenges faced this year and embrace the festivals of light, love and good cheer that lead us into the new one.
May all of us fare better in the New Year, including this remarkable planet that is our home.
Wishing you and yours a luminous journey!
HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE and best wishes for all the pleasures of the season.

Peabody-Essex Museum's Rare Bird of Fashion

The Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts continues to amaze, inspire and transform.

From it’s atmospheric and modern architecture that houses treasure from the days of tall ships to cutting edge contemporary art from India, and a centuries old Chinese house rebuilt inside the museum, there is much to explore here. For those not lucky enough to make the drive, the PEM's award winning website allows a delicious peak into the wonders housed here.


As a longtime dealer and lover of ethnographic textiles, costume and adornment, I was delighted to see that the inspiring show Rara Avis from the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute has taken wing and arrived in New England as Iris Apfel, Rare Bird of Fashion.


Iris Apfel is a free thinking, boldly creative, individualist that adores ethnic adornment and costume, haute couture and quirky tag sale finds and combines them in a distinctive way that you may not personally embrace but cannot ignore! Nor can you help gleefully smiling…Lady GaGa eat your heart out…


In the early 1950s Apfel and husband Carl began a business called Old World Weavers.They specialized in weaving exact reproductions of antique-period fabric and found a ready audience for upscale interior décor, including extensive work for the White House, Metropolitan Museum and others.


In her late 80’s, she is being embraced for the original fashion icon that she became by simply being herself and for the influence she has had in the professional worlds of fashion and interior décor.


When asked several years ago “Which outfits have you put together that truly reflect your style?” Iris Apfel easily recited a few eclectic ensembles…
”A cowhide apron worn with a black satin jumpsuit. Antique Georgian jewelry mixed with flea market bangles and beads.. A canvas dance skirt from a Southwest pueblo edged in tinkling tin bells worn with different couture jackets. A silver-fox coat belted with a beaded African wall hanging, and red woolen boots with embroidered trim from Etro.”


As the exhibit opened at PEM she was posed with the question, “How does fashion give you courage?”
Iris Apfel, now 88 and vibrant as ever, replied,
“Dress gives you the opportunity to express yourself: who you are, who you think you are or who you want to be. So, take advantage of it. I hope that Rare Bird of Fashion will encourage you to be a bit creative, a bit daring and have more than a bit of fun.”


This sense of joyful exuberance and rakish good humor is infectious and if you can’t make it in to the show right away, go to the museum website www.pem.org and click on the interactive paperdolls that permit the latent fashionista in you to dress the mannequins! What fun.


Also worth the trip is Trash Menagerie.

Whimsical and fantastic animal sculptures formed of thrown away packaging are the focus here.Wonderful interactive videos on the website for this as well! Don’t miss Joshua Harris’inflatable trash bag bears and other animals brought to life by NYC subway trains swishing by underneath them !


All of this can not help but put a creative spin on your day!

A gentle reminder to lighten up and let your inner child come out and play!
Happy Halloween!

Autumn Comes to New England

Yesterday it was official, summer has departed and the calling card of cool nights coupled with the overhead honking of Southbound geese has been duly acknowledged but the wood frogs still chatter in the trees at dusk. The chorus of crickets and cicadas serenade the nights despite early frost warnings.We can keep the windows open a while longer and hear the wildlife settling in all around us.


Here in the hills of New England we have been trying to ignore the fiery color building on the hillsides for weeks, first yellow birch and beech and later bursts of flame-orange maples scattered here and there. But there is no denying the calendar… the Autumnal Equinox has come and gone… ready or not.


Recently warm days contrast with the mounds of colorful pumpkins, and ornamental gourds sitting shoulder to shoulder with pots of purple asters and mums of russet red and bright yellow along every rural highway. The last Monarch butterflies visit somewhat diminished gardens and humans are amazed to see darkness descend before 7:30. A lone female hummingbird sips what nectar can be found in late blooming blossoms. And a pile of split wood waits to be neatly stacked until the first fires are lit.


The transition from exterior to interior, extroversion to introspection has subtly begun as our inner landscape reflects the outer. A bittersweet acquiescence to the passage of time mingles with the anticipation of the glorious pageantry of color to come. No one puts on a more dramatic display of Fall color than New England. Some days are so clear and crisp and the foliage so intense against cerulean blue skies it seems unreal; like an over the top, highly saturated “Technicolor” movie of the mid-fifties. It is my favorite season and one of the attractions that pulled me from the steamy South to these northern hills.


Early morning transitions are particularly magical in this area. On the road to Maine recently as the sun was rising, mists were lifting from the waters of a nearby pond. Two young deer gracefully crossed the road after sampling the cool water; a pair of crows silhouetted on a bare branch and shrouded in fog cawed loudly as I stopped my car to take it all in.


The intimate scene I just described takes place everyday, but most of us are so intent on getting to where we need to be, we do not notice them. Try to take the time to witness the changes taking place where you are today, savor the timeless beauty of the ever-changing season, and remember that you are an integral part of it.