Category: Nature

Before the leaves

4/26/2017

Just before the leaves popped out, Linda and I found this beautiful bit of nature south of Wallacetown. And right away she discovered a big patch of very-rare burgundy trilliums! She was so happy! Trilliums are one of her favourite flowers.

From Facebook: likes...27...Patricia Black, Amber Dawn Pullin and 25 others
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إبراهيم أشعياء عوض burgundy Trilliums are a welcome change from the plain white ones!

Heather Roberts Cadsby Lovely! They are known as wakerobin and are, to put it politely, ill-scented.

Stan Burfield Ah. Thanks. I'll tell her.
Stan Burfield Here's where we were if anyone wants to check out the Trilliums or the trees or both. https://www.google.ca/.../data=!3m6!1e1!3m4...

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Linda and I went for a meander through Euston Park:

4/15/2017

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I clamber down
to the stream, grabbing
small branches to not slide
in the mud, and am stopped, mesmerized,
by all the little slipping arcs of
light that glide along the flow;
then walk
across the wobbling
water on a bouncing
trunk, jump
to a rock, up the bank, boots
on steps of snaking gnarly roots.

Stand still
in the quiet--

(From "Too Early for Leaves")

Linda sat on a log there and I sat next to her. In time, she wandered off. I stayed, pulling out a small book of Walt Whitman’s poems. But I was ready to pocket it again, as I assumed its small white pages would contract my mind, reduce it, the last kind of experience I wanted out there. Instead, as I focussed on the words from that open, all-encompassing mind, my own mind seemed to expand into the forest around me, without looking up at it. I became part of the forest instead of an observer, with the Cardinals calling to each other and all the old leaves from last year on the ground at my feet.

A NOISELESS, patient spider,
I mark’d, where, on a little promontory, it stood, isolated;
Mark’d how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them—ever tirelessly speeding them. 5

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing,—seeking the spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d—till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.

--Whitman

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Linda and I biked down to Springbank Park's Rose Garden. I enjoyed her enjoying what makes her happy.

7/18/2016

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From Facebook: Likes....21: Peggy Roffey, Paula Dawn Lietz and 19 others
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Wendy Clark Perron · Friends with Paula Dawn Lietz
so beautiful

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Standing Still

7/12/2016

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Here's a fascinating discussion on Soundcloud of the revival of some old, discarded ideas by modern science, including stoicism by Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (with the intriguing goal of serenity, vs happiness), also, with varying degrees of success: pan-psychism, putting insects back on the menu, some "zombie ideas", the debate about consciousness, free will, etc. I love the way the author Steven Paul talks. I would give anything (well, within reason) to be able to go on the way he does.

From Facebook: likes...4: Barbara Green, Cambridge N Calvin Keenan and 2 others
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Barbara Green That was fun, Stan, thanks! Leslie Morris, there's a section on the revival of Stoicism at the beginning.
Unlike · Reply · 1 · 23 hrs

Stan Burfield How is it that I always seem to come on here just when you do, Barbara Green? Telepathy?
Like · Reply · 23 hrs · Edited

Barbara Green Stan Burfield It's that panpsychism thing.
Like · Reply · 22 hrs

Stan Burfield I've got an easier answer to swallow: it's just another weird thing in a very long line of weird things.
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Stan Burfield I'm just now working on that poem you dug out of that prose I put on here a few days ago. It's coming. So far I've reworked the first half. Tentatively. The second half is pretty much the same yet.
Like · Reply · 22 hrs

Stan Burfield

Standing Still

"We halted and so knew that the quiet night was full of sounds..."
- T. E. Lawrence, "Seven Pillars of Wisdom"

The best part of walking
is standing still,

but not to stare at,
to grab, paint, snap
the voluminous universe
into pointillism

or to jot a note, perhaps,
on the crest-fallen "lopsided pose"
and the whoit whoit whoit
of cardinalis cardinalis
that is "given within sight of mate",

but instead to leave the world of movement-through
and enter the other.

In these moments
I do not watch the leaves in passing;
I live with them.

Beside me,
a tree shades a bush
as it has since the swelling spring
when its leaves enlarged,
and now they wobble in the slight breeze
that flows between them,
across which a spider is slowly
picking its deliberate way
above the grasses
and low herbs.
I move

and it is only a painting on a gallery wall.

I stop:
we are all here.

Like · Reply · 8 hrs · Edited

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Colt!

6/18/2016

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We have a little farm below our apartment. It's the width of the block, with a barn and a barnyard and a little field. From our balcony, Linda and I, who both grew up in the country, enjoy watching every little thing that goes on down there. They have two horses they train for competitions and then sell. When Linda was young, she had a horse she broke in and trained, so she likes to watch the guy down below teaching his horse to back up, walk sideways, spin on a dime, etc. Well, yesterday a new horse came out of the barn, brown with black mane and tail, and then a tiny colt walked out from behind her! It had very gangly legs and a big head, and could hardly walk yet. It must have just been born. This morning it's walking more confidently. Linda and I laughed when, after nursing, it walked right under her to the other side.

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Cambridge N Calvin Keenan Awwww that's a cheerful blessing ! It's lovely to hear your stories , we enjoy them very much 🌹 a rose for you and beautiful Linda :)

Stan Burfield Thank you, Cambridge!

Meredith Moeckel This is truly a good story! And how lucky you and Linda are to have such a beautiful view of nature right below you! :)

Linda Eva Williams How lucky there is a place right in the city for a mini-stable without people complaining. Peoples' feathers get ruffled if one mentions backyard chicken coops in Calgary.

Stan Burfield Yeah, it's very surprising. And right below us. Well, he's the last farmer-holdout in the city, and he's sold most of his land to developers. Just keeps enough for what he likes the most.

Linda Eva Williams Good! Now he can certainly afford to.

Yvonne Maggs What a lovely view you two have...

Stan Burfield Here's the full view. That's the farmer's forest right below us, and part of his field to the left of his barnyard.

Linda Eva Williams Have you met him? If so, pass on our compliments.

Stan Burfield I will. No I haven't had the opportunity.

Linda Eva Williams You might have met a new poet! What the heck - ask him to write one. At the very least he'll feel flattered. Especially if he's lonely, as so many of our elders are.

Stan Burfield Actually, he's always busy doing things, has about eight vehicles on his property, has several businesses going with them, a wife and a young employee who trains the horses. Every evening he has a big barbeque going behind the house, making supper for them.

Linda Eva Williams OK, loneliness not a factor lol.

Linda Eva Williams Still, why not extend yourself to him? When I feel emboldened, I never fail to enjoy people I'd never have thought to meet. Who knows? You might attend a BBQ.

Stan Burfield Maybe. I won't discount the possibility. I'm a lot less shy than I used to be.

Linda Eva Williams If you invite me over, I'll get you together in a trice - winky face (FB has removed the option for me to post something like a simple smile or heart (grouchy face).

Stan Burfield Okay, you're invited whether you invite me to meet him or not. But I know you, you'd hop on that horse and not come off.

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A perfect day to stroll in the woods.

6/16/2016

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Sauntering

4/23/2016

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As I walked home from our first Guerrilla Poetry happening at the central library, stopping at City Lights to purchase a book of old essays, I settled into a comfortable pace of three miles an hour, looking down at the opened book in my hand then up then down then around then down, stopping half way at Wartley Village for an Earl Grey tea and then on, reading H. D. Thoreau's 1862 essay, "Walking", and this passage:

"English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake Poets,--Chauser and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare, included--breathes no quite fresh and, in this sense, wild strain. It is an essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her wilderness is a green wood, her wild man, a Robin Hood. There is plenty of genial love of Nature, but not so much of Nature herself. Her chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not when the wild man in her, became extinct."

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Before the leaves

Linda and I went for a meander through Euston Park:

Linda and I biked down to Springbank Park's Rose Garden. I enjoyed her enjoying what makes her happy.

Standing Still

Colt!

A perfect day to stroll in the woods.

Sauntering

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