Branch Ranch created by Robert Nielsen & Billie Tannen, Billie Beads 10.12.12 ~ Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut
Lief Falldownsoon is the king of the leaf fairies and is in charge of the legions of leaves that cover the trees. Busy all summer helping the leaves turn sunlight into food for the trees, Lief and his kin at Branch Ranch, enjoy the fall the best when the leaves can all start to rest. Although the green leaves inspire the landscape artists all summer, Lief knows that the real show happens when they begin to change color, turning from green to red, yellow, or gold before leaping into the blue sky for the twisty, twirly, gusty, blusty, ride to the ground. ~ Wee Faerie Village: Land of Picture Making
Autumnal Fortress created by Kristen Thornton 10.12.12 ~ Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, Connecticut
Faellan is the faerie for colorful autumn foliage. His name comes from Old English and means an abundance of leaves, aka the fall! The many colors and textures of the leaves inspire the painters in so many ways. As the leaves turn from green to gold, they capture the creative imaginations at several stages. Whether held aloft in the tree top, dancing fancifully through the autumn air, or carpeting the ground below, Faellan’s leaves are the season’s showstoppers. ~ Wee Faerie Village: Land of Picture Making
Blind folk see the fairies, Oh, better far than we, Who miss the shining of their wings Because our eyes are filled with things We do not wish to see. They need not seek enchantment From solemn, printed books, For all about them as they go The fairies flutter to and fro With smiling, friendly looks. ~ Rose Fyleman (White Magic)
Deaf folk hear the fairies However soft their song; ‘Tis we who lose the honey sound Amid the clamor all around That beats the whole day long. But they with gentle faces Sit quietly apart; What room have they for sorrowing While fairy minstrels sit and sing Close to their listening heart? ~ Rose Fyleman (White Magic)
The fairies have never a penny to spend, They haven’t a thing put by, But theirs is the dower of bird and of flower And theirs are the earth and the sky. And though you should live in a palace of gold Or sleep in a dried-up ditch, You could never be as poor as the fairies are, And never as rich. ~ Rose Fyleman (Fairies & Chimneys)
When music is your life, there is a key that gets you to the core. I am so grateful that I still have Crazy Horse, knock on wood. You see, they are my window to the cosmic world where the muse lives and breathes. I can find myself there and go to the special area of my soul where those songs graze like buffalo. The herd is still there, and the plains are endless. Just getting there is the key thing, and Crazy Horse is my way of getting there. That is the place where music lives in my soul. It is not youth, time, or age. I dream of playing those long jams and floating over the herd like a condor. I dream of the changing wind playing on my feathers, my brothers and sisters around me, silently telling their stories and sharing their spirits with the sky. They are my life. ~ Neil Young (Waging Heavy Peace)
They are not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another such a gem. ~ Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
One of my dad’s earliest and very special memories was of sitting on his father’s shoulders, watching a New York City ticker tape parade in honor of Charles Lindbergh, who had returned from his historic solo transatlantic flight. Dad was five years old that day, June 13, 1927, and he and his father were among the estimated 3 to 4 million people lined up along Fifth Avenue from Battery Park to Central Park. The New York Times wrote “Never was America prouder of a son.” What a thrill it was for a little fellow to catch a glimpse of his hero!
Today Dad turns 90 and I thought I could honor this milestone with some words from the autobiography written by his childhood hero. I gave Dad a copy of The Spirit of St. Louis a few years ago, and I know he read some of it, even while protesting that he disliked reading. He was never much of a reader – he said all the reading he had to do in college turned him off to it. But he loved to discuss the meanings of words and we both enjoyed looking things up in the dictionary and encyclopedia. Now that he is confined to a wheelchair we do find him reading the books we offer to him from time to time.
Charles A. Lindbergh
For unmeasurable periods, I seem divorced from my body, as though I were an awareness spreading out through space, over the earth and into the heavens, unhampered by time or substance, free from the gravitation that binds to heavy human problems of the world. My body requires no attention. It’s not hungry. It’s neither warm or cold. It’s resigned to being left undisturbed. Why have I troubled to bring it here? I might better have left it back at Long Island or St. Louis, while the weightless element that has lived within it flashes through the skies and views the planet. This essential consciousness needs no body for its travels. It needs no plane, no engine, no instruments, only the release from flesh which circumstances I’ve gone through make possible.
Then what am I – the body substance which I can see with my eyes and feel with my hands? Or am I this realization, this greater understanding which dwells within it, yet expands through the universe outside; a part of all existence, powerless but without need for power; immersed in solitude, yet in contact with all creation? There are moments when the two appear inseparable, and others when they could be cut apart by the merest flash of light.
While my hand is on the stick, my feet on the rudder, and my eyes on the compass, this consciousness, like a winged messenger, goes out to visit the waves below, testing the warmth of water, the speed of wind, the thickness of intervening clouds. It goes north to the glacial coasts of Greenland, over the horizon to the edge of dawn, ahead to Ireland, England, and the continent of Europe, away through space to the moon and stars, always returning, unwillingly, to the mortal duty of seeing that the limbs and muscles have attended their routine while it was gone.
A lifting gale of sea-gulls followed them; slim yachts of the element, Natural growths of the sky, no wonder Light wings to leave sea; but those grave weights toil, and are powerful. ~ Robinson Jeffers (Pelicans)
In this world you’ve a soul for a compass And a heart for a pair of wings There’s a star on the far horizon Rising bright in an azure sky For the rest of the time that you’re given Why walk when you can fly? ~ Mary Chapin Carpenter ♫ (Why Walk When You Can Fly) ♫
in the blue night frost haze, the sky glows with the moon pine tree tops bend snow-blue, fade into sky, frost, starlight. the creak of boots. rabbit tracks, deer tracks, what do we know.
~ Gary Snyder
(Pine Tree Tops)
Like the prodigal son I return to you, the sea. You who scare the idylls off into tame inner fjords, bays and inlets because you are much too majestic for weekend yachtsmen, outboard motors and hobby anglers. Without so much as a blink you swallow the sun like a raw egg-yolk for supper and at daybreak you lift heavy banks of cloud dense with rain and squalls, a wet cloth on sleep-heavy eyes and throbbing temples. With the horizon like a diadem about your brows you write your salt letters to the shore. Land changes, men and beasts come and go. Only you live your solitary life, the world’s blue eyes fixed on the stars and eternity.
A few days ago around sunset Tim came charging down the stairs, camera in hand, and bolted out the front door. He had noticed a subtle change in lighting inside and decided to look out the window when he saw these dramatic clouds. So today I’m finally getting around to sharing his pictures! They seem like unusual looking clouds for around these parts…
