By the Sea

Just a fun collage piece I put together while working on my Nature Gathered challenge.

At last, a sunny day...

It seems like a lifetime since I was last able to walk the LaCamas Lake trail in the warmth of the sun. A week ago, the cold of winter parted and allowed a sneak peak of spring to be. I grabbed my camera and headed out for the trail and was not disappointed.

I had not seen my shadow in so long!

The reflective color of the deep blue sky sets of the winter bare foliage and and moss covered trees.

The jet contrails make abstract art in the water.

And the full moon rises to lend her beauty to the sky.

I am taking part in a small poetry and prose exchange that will continue through all the days of winter. I thought I would share a few of my words:

December 30, 2008

How much more vibrant are the colors of the landscape when heard through the song of birds and the percussion of wind and rain. The music of the landscape is composed by all who share its bounty and color forms the notes in which it is written. Each being plays its own melody - a flash of red thunder wing , a shy soprano in drab grey, the dark melancholy of bare, brown branches, the jaunty tune of a squirrel stealing peanuts from the blare of the sky blue jays – yet all these songs will join together to create the symphony of life.

January, 27, 2009

Fly wild and free

Joyously celebrate your freefall, weightless

Dance in the clouds

While singing your trumpet songs

On your southward journey home.

I close my eyes and feel

Your windon my face

And become a feather on your wing

Taking my spring-yearning heart

toa a warmer land

Leaving on ly my time worn body

to contend with the cold winter.

I dream of daffodil sun.

February 5, 2009

Small yellow suns dot the grass

Dandelion wine, you say...

But I see thousands of white downy parachutes

Blowing in the wind

Eager to seed another star.

No weeds, these

But small worlds yet to be

Found Poetry

LK Ludwig posted a found poetry prompt on her blog on 2/6/09 to create a poem from the words on three scraps of book text and work it into your journal. Here is my interpretation of her exercise, taken from the pages of an 1860's ornithology textbook. Rather than put it in my journal, I created a journal "bottle" to illustrate my poem:

In winter,

Dark, without the exquisite hue of spring birds
Silky, silvery white feathers contrast

With the dingy, less-pure colors of the season.
Restless, active little forest birds,
Picking bugs out of cracks in bark,
A quaint and curious song

Recalling a titlark in midsummer

Be sure to visit her blog and check out everyone's links and read their found poetry, as well. Enjoy!

A Weekend at the Coast

Sunset at Lincoln City

A curious seal

Sun break on the ocean

Siletz Bay tree

Happy dog chasing the seals

Crow's feet

Lincoln City Beach

Another sunset view

***

I just returned from the Central Coast of Oregon where I took a class in Writing and Selling Nature Essays at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology. The class was taught by Melissa Hart, a professor at University of Oregon, who also teaches an online class in memoir writing for University of California, Berkeley. Her class was amazing - she taught so much in a short six hours and was very generous in sharing her resources. Eight women from Oregon and Washington, some new to writing, others already published, attended the class and shared stories together in this peaceful and remote area, with a stunning view from every window. We learned that vision is our strongest sense and tends to dominate our stories. So we left the classroom and went outside into the trees and closed our eyes to hear the birds and the distant thunder of the ocean waves, used our fingers to feel the soft, velvet moss on rough tree bark, and used our noses to smell and taste the salted pine air and pungent loam beneath our feet. After the class, I drove to Lincoln City and walked the beach, searching for treasure and enjoying the sun as it set behind a fog bank. After spending the night, I left to explore other beaches in the area, stopping at Siletz Bay where I watched a happy dog chase a herd of sea lions off their cozy sand beach and into the cold waters. All too soon it was time to go home, but rather than my normal route, I chose to meander slowly through the slow back roads, exploring towns I had never been to before and did not know existed. There is so much of the world we don't know and miss in our travels over the interstate. Yet, in these places, history is alive and once experienced, stay in our hearts forever.