I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes something alive.
Granted there is a more specific definition amongst the scientists of the world, though even they seem to grapple with the precise definition of what makes something alive. But I am thinking of something else.
This painting was born from a place. A place I’ve come to know as a medicine place. I didn’t always
Do you have a birthday tradition? Mine is hiking Big Butt Trail. Last year my husband and I were drenched in a thunderstorm. I was certain I was going to die by lightning strike. On my birthday. This year, however, the weather was fine―overcast and chilly and perfect weather for trilliums, which bloom in absolute profusion in mid-May on this trail. Hence the tradition.
How do snowdrops do it? How do they know when to bloom? Is it the light, the thawing earth? Or some secret alchemical algorithm known only to the Snowdrop Queen, who conducts the Snowdrop Symphony from her ethereal fairy realm?
Long Light pastel on board, 8 x 10″ You are walking westward, into the mountain. It is early January, just
This is the second February for my hellebores, which I planted later in the season two years ago, and they are well established and adorned with more blossoms than I put in my pastel. Their old leaves from last summer lay spent upon the ground, still green but dying back, now that new growth is emerging.
In the fading light of dusk a waxing crescent hangs on the horizon. A Pale Beauty moth emerges into her first night, dressed in the ephemeral wings of her ancestors. She is surrounded by paper birch leaves. Like the Moon, she is just emerging, cast with the shimmer of new things. Vibrant and untouched, her wings have not lost one scale.
I walk along the edge of the river.
It is full from many days’ rain. I’ve been reading the folklore of the hag. There’s Long-Armed Nelly, the hag of rivers, who will grab you and pull you into her wet home. There you would obviously drown, and be eaten by her. It seems a little real as the dark river rolls below me with furious power. I think of branches that might rush by, and pull me into the cold rushing waters. I keep my distance from the edge.