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Eostre
April 16, 2017 In Climbing Landscape Prayer Flags Spring
[View with images]  I won’t be climbing the tree until later today, when we have returned from out of town.  But earlier in the week I have climbed in sunshine and luxurious...
Hands on Bark, Face to the Sun
April 2, 2017 In Climbing Miscellanea Rumination Spring
Thursday, March 30th.  Deep blue skies, sunshine, warmth.   Never mind that we’ll have a substantial snow storm tomorrow through Saturday—for now it is gorgeously,...
Tonic
March 22, 2017 In Climbing Rumination Spring Weather
It is one of those bitter winter days (on this second day of spring) with transcendentally blue skies and luminous sunshine.  The light reflecting from the full snow cover...
Riding the Storm
March 14, 2017 In Climbing Landscape Snow Weather Winter
A real storm at last!  Stella is working her way up the coast.  I am home from a morning at work and we are all settled in for the afternoon as the rate of snowfall is beginning...
Riding the Wind
March 11, 2017 In Climbing Landscape Tree Weather Winter
All night winds beat at the house, slamming loose screen doors and driving empty buckets around on the porch.  The very walls creak and shudder. The winds continue unabated...
Jostle and Abound
March 1, 2017 In Miscellanea
  March 1.  It is my first climb to the top of the tree by night since my shoulder injury.  It is moonless and dark.  The sky is a winter sky, black and brilliant...
Hold My Beer
February 27, 2017 In Climbing Landscape Prayer Flags Weather Winter
Our weather the last few weeks has whipsawed between spring and deep winter, with autumnal and nearly summery days thrown in for good measure.  An apt joke makes the rounds...
Collaboration
February 23, 2017 In Company Rumination Snow Winter
One of the reasons I climb the tree every day, year round, is to search out a deeper and more intimate relation to the natural world and the passing of its seasons on this...
Windy Ridge
February 14, 2017 In Climbing Company Miscellanea Snow Weather Winter
We are having a strong winter storm at last!  It is Sunday and I climb the tree as Claire and I head back to the house after a hike through the storm along the Cross-Town...
Twigs their Riggings
February 11, 2017 In Prayer Flags Winter
[View with images]  The lower string of flags are down.  They have drifted between the branches and are strung up in the undergrowth, only a few feet from the ladder that...
On Taking Down the Christmas Tree
January 15, 2017 In Miscellanea Rumination Tree Winter
I love the inversions that occur in climbing the tree—such as being up in the branches and watching a bird on the ground below me that has no idea it is being observed from...
Snowstorm
December 29, 2016 In Climbing Evening Landscape Snow Weather Winter
It has been snowing hard all afternoon, coming down densely, but in small flakes so it doesn’t feel as heavy as some snowfalls.  And the storm, which was originally forecast...
In Memory of Trees Not Mine
December 28, 2016 In Landscape Miscellanea Photography Winter
[View with images]  This is in memory of trees not mine.  Not that any tree is mine, of course, even the one I climb every day.  But in a way these felt like mine too....
Blake, Trees, and the Imagination; Or, Why I Climb
December 28, 2016 In Climbing Reading Tree Winter
This week I came across the following fantastic quotation from William Blake, which could stand as an epigraph to this project: The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes...
Arborwear
December 25, 2016 In Climbing Landscape Snow Winter
It is cold and clear when I climb the tree in late afternoon, one-armed still and only into the lower branches.  The sun is millimeters from the horizon.  Light rakes...
Rockfrost
December 21, 2016 In Fall Landscape Photography Weather
[View with images] A week ago Sunday, when the sun rose a little higher, the rose color of sunrise faded and was replaced by the purest white.  Frost burned like tiny arctic...
Subzero: A Rose-Frosted World
December 11, 2016 In Fall Landscape Tree Weather
[View with images] Sunday morning, December 11.  When I get up the temperature is 1.3 degrees.  An hour later it has dropped to -.3.  Our first subzero temperature of the winter!...
Week of Many Snows
December 10, 2016 In Climbing Evening Fall Landscape Snow Weather
It was a week of many snows.  Flurries, gusts, light snowfalls of a few inches.  One afternoon a few flakes dropping from dark clouds, the next morning just enough on the ground...
Quiet; Or, The Twilight Seat
December 1, 2016 In Climbing Evening Fall Landscape Rumination Weather
My destination in the tree has shaped when I choose to climb it, in recent days.  Since I am limited by my injured shoulder to the lower branches, since I can’t roam freely...
The Lower Branches
November 21, 2016 In Climbing Fall Landscape Taoism Weather
[View with images] Overnight I have decided on a compromise.  I cannot justify climbing to the top of the tree, but I refuse to not be among the branches!  For a time I will...
Human Flesh, Human Frailty
November 20, 2016 In Climbing Fall Weather
Climbing the tree is so physically effortless at this point that I didn’t really think I would run into any problems with it.  But thanks to a too-enthusiastic exercise...
Aleatory
November 16, 2016 In Fall Photography Prayer Flags Rumination
[View with images]  It is a gorgeous day for mid-November in Vermont.  It is just over 50 degrees and sunny.  There is a good breeze, but it is still warm.  I decide...
Light So Delicious You Want To Eat It
November 14, 2016 In Evening Fall Prayer Flags Rumination
[View with images]  A quick climb near sunset, which is unnervingly early this time of year.  I grab the camera on the way out the door.  I am in the tree only briefly,...
Supermoon
November 13, 2016 In Fall Landscape Night Rumination
[View with images]  I can’t resist going into the tree tonight to observe the so-called “supermoon.”  It is the moon’s closest approach to the earth in 68 years...
Dogs and Trees
November 12, 2016 In Climbing Company Fall
A very Novemberish Friday.  Veteran’s Day.  No school for Emme, or work for me.  The day is mostly cloudy, with occasional breaks of blue sky.  Its most prominent feature...
Twenty-Three and Four
November 2, 2016 In Fall Rumination Tree
[View with images]  A clear, sunny day with a haze over the hills from the unexpected warmth, just over 60 degrees.  At a distance things are soft; up close, here in the tree,...
Shit on a Stick
November 1, 2016 In Fall Rumination Tree
It is a chilly 34 degrees out and I am up among the branches with a roll of paper towels, a sponge, and a bucket of soapy water.  I am standing on a branch about thirty feet...
Blown Open
October 21, 2016 In Climbing Fall Tree Weather
Five-thirty.  Kim has gone to collect Claire and six of her friends from a soccer game to return to the house for a sleepover.  The already dark day begins to darken more....
Soaked Through
October 19, 2016 In Fall Miscellanea Tree Weather
[View with images]  Everything is wet, soaked through.  Leaves are beginning to come down.  The floor of the tree house is covered with them.  When I climb, I find fallen...
Ablaze
October 17, 2016 In Fall Landscape Photography
[View with images]  Radiant.  Ablaze.  Luminous.  Charged with light.  As though the world itself were made of the stuff. And then I give up.  These last several days...



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