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Apple
October 10, 2016 In Fall Rumination
[View with images]    Today when I climb I am greeted by a small but interesting change in this tiny kingdom.  Some creature has made it a larder.  Nestled in a crotch...
Primal Gods or Monsters
September 29, 2016 In Fall Night
For several consecutive days I climb at night.  The full moon is gone and the nights are plunged into shadow.  Always the sky has a kind of dark glow, stars scattered across...
Equinox
September 21, 2016 In Fall
The first leaves are changing.  Along the roadsides, at the edges of fields and woods, there are scatterings of yellow and rust among the green.  As you drive along, a few leaves...
Some Other Owl
September 13, 2016 In Fall Night
I pick up Claire from soccer and then Emme from her friend’s house after a French lesson.  The sun is setting as we head for home.  As I turn onto the bottom of our road...
Thunk
August 22, 2016 In Miscellanea Summer
Today, arriving home with Claire, I invite her to join me for my second one-legged climb.  Though sick, she agrees with alacrity.  She shoots up first while I make my slow,...
Beginner’s Body
August 21, 2016 In Summer
It is yesterday evening.  In a break between episodes of Stranger Things, Emme and I run outside to throw a frisbee on the freshly mown lawn.  The evening has cooled and the sun is below...
On Not Climbing The Tree
August 3, 2016 In Rumination Summer
Georgian Bay.  Ontario.  Gray and warm, with a strong choppy wind coming in off the water.  Yesterday I climbed the tree at 5:03 am before our thirteen hour drive to get here....
Deep Summer
July 20, 2016 In Landscape Rumination Summer
Today, up in the tree, I think: it is deep summer.  The foam of bedstraw has subsided.  Stretched out below me now is the milkweed meadow.   Nodding pink-white clusters...
Joy; Or, Swinging From Branches
July 12, 2016 In Climbing Rumination Summer
[View with images]  Of all the reasons I climb the tree, it would be easy for one to get lost in the shuffle.  I climb, I write, I think, I photograph; I lose myself in the tree,...
Heat
July 6, 2016 In Summer
When I climb today it is 90 degrees.  A hundred and ten degrees warmer than the coldest climb I have done, which was -20, back in February.  The heat the last few days is suffocating,...
When Heights are Like Depths
July 5, 2016 In Climbing Summer Tree
[View with images]   After work I take Emme swimming at the Town Pond, where she runs into close friends, and they have a blast horsing around on a huge inner tube–through...
Eclose Me!
July 4, 2016 In Prayer Flags Rumination Summer
[View with images]  A hot afternoon.  Later, we will be going to see fireworks on Lake Morey for the Fourth of July. But for now: prayer flags. Both strands need to be replaced....
Froth, Foam
July 2, 2016 In Landscape Rumination Summer
A gorgeous morning: I climb early and quickly.  In my moment of standing in my arboreal perch, I think how different the sound of wind in the leaves is when you are up there...
Trees and Mountains
June 30, 2016 In Landscape Rumination Summer
[View with images]   It is a stunning, perfect late June morning, a Thursday.  I climb early, 6:30, before heading out of town to climb Camel’s Hump.  Both girls are away,...
Fireflies
June 20, 2016 In Landscape Night Summer
Each evening at twilight the meadow comes alive.  Fireflies float and dart, flashing in the air.  There are more this year than we have ever seen before, they drift and flash...
Kids in Trees
June 15, 2016 In Climbing Company Photography Summer
This afternoon and the next we have a spare hour, and on each of them we climb again.  The first day we bring up the Canon as well as the iPhone, and spend even longer...
Wood Spirits
June 14, 2016 In Climbing Company Photography Summer
[View with images]  Claire’s birthday.  I work in the morning and am back by mid-afternoon.  We have a few hours before we meet Kim to drive up to Montpelier to go out to dinner...
Head Full of Lichen
June 8, 2016 In Climbing Summer
I climb in the morning.  Later in the day, six or eight hours afterwards, I pull a bit of lichen from my hair.  I feel around.  My whole head is full of crumbled lichen,...
The Drum
June 5, 2016 In Landscape Rumination Summer
As I stand in the tree today I hear a small flutter.  A chickadee has broken through the mantle of foliage and is perched on a twig.  For a little while it hops about from...
Evening Climb
June 1, 2016 In Climbing Company Evening Summer
I get home from work late in the evening and by the time I have a quick bite of dinner it is close to nine.  Emme, who is in high spirits, asks if we could go climb the tree,...
Company
May 28, 2016 In Climbing Company Night Spring
Trish and Jeff and Tristan and Finnley are up for the weekend.  It was intensely hot today, near 90, and we had an early dinner with Doug, Anne, and Rob.  I grilled chicken,...
The Countless Secret Woods
May 25, 2016 In Landscape Reading Spring Tree
I am in the tree and it is hot and humid.  The leaves hang heavy and it is only May.  I happen to have the Canon when a Black-and-white Warbler lands on a nearby branch....
The Radiant Night
May 20, 2016 In Night Spring Tree
This morning Emme and I set off on foot at 6:50 for walk to school day.  It was chilly and sunny and breathtakingly beautiful.  The world was silent, raked with sunshine,...
Sight as Fugitive as Sound
May 12, 2016 In Landscape Spring
Climbed again around 9:00, in late twilight.  Looking up as I climb, the tree is full of countless starburst shapes silhouetted against the sky.  Millions of them, it seems,...
Budburst
May 12, 2016 In Spring Tree
After a few cool and cloudy days we have had three days of warmth and sunshine: highs first in the 60s, then the 70s, and today close to 80.  Over the course of these three...
The Empty Tree
May 11, 2016 In Rumination Spring
The tree as I experience it, up among the branches, is always an empty tree.  That’s why I’m up there.
Exuberance and Playfulness; Or, The Headless Selfie
May 10, 2016 In Rumination Spring
I take a pictures in the tree pretty often, and maybe once or twice a month I take a few pictures of myself up there.  After all, I am conveying the experience of being in a tree,...
Axis Mundi
May 9, 2016 In Reading Rumination Spring Tree
I climb branch to branch.  I travel up alongside the trunk, and I might circle it, but I often ascend and descend without ever touching it.  How different a tree is if one thinks...
Inside the Tree
May 8, 2016 In Climbing Rumination Spring Tree
I climbed early today, 6:30 on a Saturday, the rest of the house still sleeping.  I slipped out to the car to retrieve a Mother’s Day gift and flowers to hide them away...
Budbreak
May 7, 2016 In Spring Tree
Saturday, the air cool, bands of light and dark gray clouds alternating along the sky.  The sun threatens to break through every hour or so--a white glare above the hills--but...



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