imagination – In the Woods

whenever we’re not looking

5.11.26 ~ Race Point Beach, Provincetown, Massachusetts
photo by Jon

In May I took a whirlwind trip to Cape Cod and Connecticut to scatter and bury Tim’s ashes. Five intense days of sharing memories and enjoying the family and friends and activities that Tim used to love. It’s taking me a while to recover but I’ve decided to share a few pictures here to help me remember.

On May 11th, 27 of us headed out to Race Point Beach in Provincetown where I scattered some of Tim’s ashes on the beach where he spent many of the happiest days of his life. Tim’s brother Dan shared stories of their childhood adventures in P’town. And many in the gathering took turns spontaneously sharing their favorite memories. Moments after I scattered Tim’s ashes, we heard the particular call of a laughing gull flying overhead, gently reminding me of Tim’s wonderful sense of humor.

While we were there we took advantage of the opportunity, with all of Tim’s remaining brothers gathered, Dan, Matt, Jed, and Josh, to scatter some of their father’s ashes. Erik had died back in 2008 and also had close ties to Provincetown. And Tim’s cousin Allegra scattered some of her mother’s ashes there on the sand, too. Her mother was Tim’s beloved Aunt Delorma, who died in January, only three months after him.

We all have such happy memories of vacationing at the family home in Provincetown. The current owner of 180 Bradford St. was very gracious to allow us to leave two memorial blown glass hearts in the garden. Allegra sculpted them, with some of their ashes inside, the red one is Tim’s.

The next day, Fran, Allegra and I had an amazing family history adventure, locating 72B Commercial St., where Tim and Dan’s 2nd-great-grandparents, Elijah & Zipporah Rodgers had lived. When Tim and Dan were kids they were taken to the house and met the widow of his great-granduncle, Capt. Neadom Oscar Rodgers (1876-1953), Aunt Lil, and Neadom’s son Oscar. (Oscar was Aunt Lil’s stepson.) Allegra was also taken there, as a very small child, on a separate occasion. Tim showed me the place on our honeymoon but my memory of its location got very fuzzy.

As we were checking it out a man came down the grass-covered lane it was located on and, after explaining who I was, I asked him a few questions. One thing led to another and the next thing we knew we were sitting in the dining room of an elderly neighbor who has lived there his whole life and remembered Aunt Lil Rodgers and playing in the lane. Aunt Lil died in 1979. The information we got from him led me to find more information about the house and its occupants online.

That afternoon I took a walk on Beech Forest Trail with my sons and nieces and nephew and some of their spouses. (No one in my generation was up for the hike!) I told them the story of Tim & me taking this walk on our honeymoon, and how we took it again after getting our first digital camera in 2009. The picture of the squirrel on the sidebar of this blog came from that walk, and was my first taste of enjoying nature photography. Sadly, this time, I, and some of the others, came back with a tick.

I’m thinking the universe may be trying to tell me that fewer nature walks and more genealogy research will be my new direction in life…

At the end of this mile-long loop walk my sons discovered a poem by one of my favorite poets under glass on the top of a picnic table. They brought me back to see it and it seemed like a beautiful reflection of my mood about the changes in focus I’m going through in my life.

For example, what the trees do
not only in lightning storms
or the watery dark of a summer’s night
or under the white nets of winter
but now, and now, and now – whenever
we’re not looking. Surely you can’t imagine
they don’t dance, from the root up, wishing
to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting
a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly
more shade – surely you can’t imagine they just
stand there loving every
minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings
of the years slowly and without a sound
thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,
and then only in its own mood, comes
to visit, surely you can’t imagine
patience, and happiness, like that.
~ Mary Oliver
(Can You Imagine?)

…to be continued

lasting for a very short time

A lovely walk with friends down by the creek, dotted with fleeting spring ephemerals at every turn. The trees are leafing out and the sky was as blue as it gets.

People have no respect for impermanence. We take no delight in it; in fact, we despair of it. We regard it as pain. We try to resist it by making things that will last — forever, we say — things that we don’t have to wash, things that we don’t have to iron. Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things.
~ Pema Chödrön
(When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times)

And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky —
~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #466)

We are seeing, then, that our experience is altogether momentary. From one point of view, each moment is so elusive and so brief that we cannot even think about it before it has gone. From another point of view, this moment is always here, since we know no other moment than the present moment. It is always dying, always becoming past more rapidly than imagination can conceive. Yet at the same time it is always being born, always new, emerging just as rapidly from that complete unknown we call the future. Thinking about it almost makes you breathless.
~ Alan Watts
(The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety)

green-and-gold (thanks to Nina for the identification)

bluets, anchored in moss, clinging to the creek bank

The green-and-golds and the violet wood-sorrels were new wildflowers for me.

freedom within

“Portrait of a Little Girl” by Jahn Ekenæs

They shut me up in Prose —
As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet —
Because they liked me “still” —

Still! Could themself have peeped —
And seen my Brain — go round —
They might as wise have lodged a Bird
For Treason — in the Pound —

Himself has but to will
And easy as a Star
Look down opon Captivity —
And laugh — No more have I —

~ Emily Dickinson
(The Poems of Emily Dickinson, #445)

within the grip of winter

Within the grip of winter, it is almost impossible to imagine the spring. The gray perished landscape is shorn of color. Only bleakness meets the eye; everything seems severe and edged. Winter is the oldest season; it has some quality of the absolute. Yet beneath the surface of winter, the miracle of spring is already in preparation; the cold is relenting; seeds are wakening up. Colors are beginning to imagine how they will return. Then, imperceptibly, somewhere one bud opens and the symphony of renewal is no longer reversible. From the black heart of winter a miraculous, breathing plenitude of color emerges.
~ John O’Donohue
(To Bless the Space Between Us)

Groundhog Day was one of our favorite holidays. We had a tradition of taking our groundhog stuffy outside to see (or to not see) his shadow. We named him Basil (Wasyl) after my grandfather, who was born in Ukraine on February 2, 1882. By 2014 Basil had a companion, who was at first named Basil, Jr. At some point Tim, with his endless sense of humor, started calling the little one Oregano, and it stuck.

I cannot bear to continue this tradition without my beloved. So I decided to dig up some of the pictures I took of it over the years, in memory of Tim. I am definitely within the grip of winter, the one outside and a winter of grief. I still can’t imagine how a future without him will ever feel like spring.

Tim, Oregano & Basil bird-watching together (2025, Bolin Forest)
this turned out to be our last Groundhog Day together

definite shadows (2024, North Carolina Botanical Garden)

Tim waiting for the parade to begin with Basil & Oregano
(2023, Essex Ed Groundhog Day Parade)

fun in the snow (2022, Haley Farm State Park)

2.2.14 ~ Essex, Connecticut — Tim waiting with the Basils
(2014, Essex Ed Groundhog Day Parade)

Basil, Oregano and I will stay inside and light a candle this year.

to the blessed light that comes

“Woodland Stream in a Winter Landscape”
by John Henry Twachtman

I cannot tell you
how the light comes.
What I know
is that it is more ancient
than imagining.
That it travels
across an astounding expanse
to reach us.
That it loves
searching out
what is hidden
what is lost
what is forgotten
or in peril
or in pain.
That it has a fondness
for the body
for finding its way
toward flesh
for tracing the edges
of form
for shining forth
through the eye,
the hand,
the heart.
I cannot tell you
how the light comes,
but that it does.
That it will.
That it works its way
into the deepest dark
that enfolds you,
though it may seem
long ages in coming
or arrive in a shape
you did not foresee.
And so
may we this day
turn ourselves toward it.
May we lift our faces
to let it find us.
May we bend our bodies
to follow the arc it makes.
May we open
and open more
and open still
to the blessed light
that comes.
~ Jan Richardson
(How the Light Comes)

under the trees

8.21.24 ~ eastern tiger swallowtail
Cedar Falls Park, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

We are all woodland people. Like trees, we hold a genetic memory of the past because trees are parents to the child deep within us. We feel that shared history come alive every time we step into the forest, where the majesty of nature calls to us in a voice beyond our imaginations. But even in those of us who haven’t encountered trees in months or even years, the connection to the natural world is there, waiting to be remembered.
~ Diana Beresford-Kroeger
(To Speak for the Trees: My Life’s Journey from Ancient Celtic Wisdom to a Healing Vision of the Forest)

At last! A day arrived with low humidity and a chance for a walk in the woods. Though I was tempted to visit the botanical garden I was drawn here to visit a new-to-us park we had discovered some time ago while out running errands in the heat. We found lots of interesting things growing under the trees in this lovely park.

Asiatic dayflower (beautiful but invasive)

The trees at Cedar Falls Park are typical of an upland forest in the Piedmont, with oak and hickory predominating and here and there a pine tree. Second growth trees with a brushy understory line both sides of the trails near the northern part of the park.
~ This Way to Nature website

sweetgum seedling
(thanks to Debbie for the identification)

upside down indigo milk cap with a tiny snail

They would worry about wearing me out, but I could also see that I was a reminder of all they feared: chance, uncertainty, loss, and the sharp edge of mortality. Those of us with illnesses are the holders of the silent fears of those with good health.
~ Elisabeth Tova Bailey
(The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating)

The march of human progress seemed mainly a matter of getting over that initial shock of being here.
~ Barbara Kingsolver
(Animal Dreams)

a puddle of water left in Cedar Fork Creek

Finding the snail moving across the blue mushroom and then the patch of partridge berries simply filled me with delight!

flora by the sea

10.10.22 ~ Cognitive Garden at Avery Point

On Indigenous Peoples’ Day my good friend Janet and I took a long afternoon walk from Eastern Point to Avery Point and back again, passing by Beach Pond both ways. The weather was picture perfect, if a bit on the breezy side.

After admiring the views of Long Island Sound and identifying the various islands and lighthouses we could see on a clear day, we found the “Cognitive Garden” on the Avery Point campus. There was still a lot of interest to see there in the middle of autumn. Textures and colors.

Cognition means to acquire knowledge through the senses, experience, and thought. A cognitive garden encourages learning through these three processes while exposing people to nature. While the beneﬁts of nature extend to all ages, young children learn primarily through their senses and a multitude of studies have demonstrated a correlation between sensory stimulation and brain development.
~ University of Connecticut, Avery Point Campus website

The naturalist is a civilized hunter. He goes goes alone into a field or woodland and closes his mind to everything but that time and place, so that life around him presses in on all the senses and small details grow in significance. He begins the scanning search for which cognition was engineered. His mind becomes unfocused, it focuses on everything, no longer directed toward any ordinary task or social pleasantry.
~ E. O. Wilson
(Biophilia)

I wish I could include the smell of a patch of thyme for you, dear readers. What an amazing scent filled the air!

On the way back I was happy to see that Beach Pond was full of water again, although we were still in a moderate drought that day. I suspect Thursday’s torrential rains may have moved us up into the abnormally dry category. No waterbirds around but still some flowers blooming, and others spent.

So come to the pond,
or the river of your imagination,
or the harbor of your longing,
and put your lips to the world.
And live
your life.
~ Mary Oliver
(Red Bird: Poems)

the pond is full of water and the breeze was making little ripples

backside of a lingering swamp rose mallow and orbs

It felt so good sauntering along and catching up with a friend!!!

a new bridge

7.8.22 ~ Avery Farm Nature Preserve
daisy fleabane (?-it was a very tall plant)

Back in May a group of seven volunteers from the Groton Open Space Association replaced a dilapidated bridge over Haley Brook in this nature preserve. The new bridge is longer, wider and has more secure handrails. So on this pleasant day we decided to use some mosquito repellent and take a rare walk into the summer woods to check out the new bridge.

To compare with an autumn view of the farm relic pictured above, see here: autumn afternoon.

I didn’t want to risk contact with poison ivy or ticks so I couldn’t get too close to the spotted wintergreen flowers, but I was very excited to spot them out of the corner of my eye. I’ve only seen these plants before on my winter walks and have never seen the flowers. Tim used his walking stick to hold some of the surrounding vegetation back so I could at least get this blurry picture.

All of us derive security and comfort from the imaginary world of memories and fantasies and plans. We really don’t want to stay with the nakedness of our present experience. It goes against the grain to stay present. These are the times when only gentleness and a sense of humor can give us the strength to settle down.
~ Pema Chödrön
(The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times)

There were lots of damselflies fluttering through the air. One finally landed on a leaf long enough to get some pictures. Unfortunately another leaf was obstructing the view of its body but I was happy to capture some of the detail on her wings. The white dots at the end of each wing identify her as a female.

view of bridge from the other side, coming back

pine cone in tangle of branches and vines

someone planted a little garden in a stump

The bug repellent seems to have worked. I heard one mosquito around my ear but never got bit. Since I discovered a couple of things (wintergreen flowers and black-winged damselflies) I’d never seen before I wonder if it might be worth the trouble to take more summer walks in the woods…

And now the covid positivity rate in Connecticut is about 10%. Heading in the wrong direction…

as you walk the meadow loop

6.24.22 ~ Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center

A lot had changed in the seven weeks between our visits to the nature center. The trees had leafed out and we could barely see the little mound where Mama Goose had been sitting on her eggs. But on this day the bullfrogs were still populating the pond. After checking out the pond we headed out to the meadow.

We’re squeezing in as many walks as we can before the weather forces us inside. The meadow was lovely with a few well-mown paths to follow through and around it. It was so refreshingly cool that in the shade I wished I hadn’t left my hoodie in the car, but in the sunshine the warmth felt so good on my bare arms. There were lots of birds flitting about, but not too many stayed still long enough for pictures.

birdhouse with some unique “landscaping”

Then we walked back through the woods to the parking lot, and enjoyed the different things the dappled sunlight was highlighting.

But beyond perpetual wonders
and mortals asking why
casting its light upon us all
is the sun’s supreme reply.
~ Gunnar Reiss-Andersen
(The Magic of Fjords)