Little Bang Theory

Spring, in all its magic and Rightness of Place, showcases its peculiar fecundity in ways which go unnoticed at highway speeds. The swelling of pussy willows is matched by so much else which we hustle past in a kind of oblivion which would astonish our ancestors, who were necessarily more attuned to the timing and rhythms of Mother Earth.

Photography has slowed me down a bit, for which I’m grateful - one can’t run around like a chipmunk without eventually burning out. Or getting squashed by a bus…

Anyway, this weekend’s rains found me at River’s Edge in hip boots, carrying an umbrella and my camera gear. And while the lighting was sub-optimal, the outing still connected me to the swelling of the season, of tubes and tissues being pumped full, of the tumescence of life which is done being patient, through with waiting, eager to send forth its children:

New moss bursting forth on the banks of The Deerfield.

Today, Sunday, began with my alarm waking me in the darkness of 5am. I had intended to get some photographs of the fog lifting off our valley floor, but something in the pre- dawn gloom clued me that it wasn’t to be. I rolled over and went back to sleep, burying my alarm clock beneath a thick pillow.

My second coming, circa 8am, was met with a similarly gray prospective, but hey, regardless of the yield, the fruits need pickin’, so I bewed a pot and hit the road. The dank, gray weather didn’t promise much in the way of photographs, but I hopped in my CO2 machine anyway and started producing.

As things happen, as things evolve, as the light plays across the world, today I got lucky. The dull gray of ‘Tween Season gave way now and then to the promising light of Unborn Spring. I visited a just-now-accessible riverside area for a few shots, including Shelburne Falls at mid-day, through a slender break in the clouds: Then out onto Route 2 for a short drive to the Old Road, now an embodiment of the agrarian past , and a driveway which spoke to the past as succinctly as the present:

And back on the old Road, I was once again running in the rural reality, surrounded by the farm life which I’ve come to accept as the norm: Today Father Sky shared The Light, and my drive was productive. Thank You, Father Sky.

Here’s something from the Recent Pile, a community of moss sending their Sexy Parts skyward above an evocative bed of black jelly fungi :

Nature makes strange bedfellows out of all of us, non?

…And another shot of the gneiss which figures so prominently in out riverside geology hereabouts”

Yeah, I know.  It’s derivative.

But then, so am I, and so are you.  Playing with my children is one of life’s pleasures for which I won’t apologize.

Driving pitifully slowly through the deeply shadowed vales of Franklin County, my Journey of Discovery reveals what I had suspected:

The Greening has begun.

Granted, we’re seeing the nascent forms of evergreen mini-flora yawning and stretching, proudly erecting the husks of last year’s procreatorial passion play. But hey, Green Is Green, and I’ll take it:

The gelatinous fronds unfurl from beneath their retreating gray blanket, their internal waterways pressurizing like the wings of butterflies, an unwatched stop-action spectacle.

They’re poised now, waiting for the sun, waiting for us to not crush them beneath our Civilized Advance.

It seems to me like a reasonable enough aspiration for a living thing.

…are EVERYWHERE in my apartment, festooning the walls, piling up on window sills and eventually crunching underfoot as they run out the Ladybug Clock. They’re in the sinks, necessitating delicate rescues prior to the running of water (must be the Buddhist in me.)

Mostly they get re-situated onto my begonias, which they seem to like slightly less than my fingers, making the transfer tricky business. But once they’re there, they seem quite content to stay awhile:

Seeing them congregate on the window sills necessarily brings this ol’ Boomer back to the days when my daughters were squealing little joy-balls singing along to this:

And now you’re stuck with it!

These little guys adorn the riverside rocks in these parts, unnoticed by casual passers-by:

Their brittle, unobtrusive Outer Selves contain succulent, fertile cups of apricot hue, deeply shadowed, richly lit. They seem to be overly patient as living things go, retreating into their monochromatic selves till the water returns, then swelling and budding, inverting, exposing.

The growing season begins with these little things and progresses through the obvious, from the first low-lying buds through the profusion of Spring gardens.

I’m looking forward to to this particular Spring. Somehow Winter seemed really adequate this year, and I’m anticipating a classic Spring season, with abundant flowers, more than a usual amount of mushrooms (and some delectables which were conspicuous in their absence last year) and an auspicious start to the gardening season.

Of course, I’m not anxious to get too far out in front of myself, so I’m gonna let it sit right there.

But I just thought I’d share with you that I’m feeling positive about the change of seasons.

…Below Gardiner Falls. The light was atrocious, the wind was whipping, and only the Very Small sat still for me.

But in the mists of the Falls, the transformation had begun.

From the flood-bared driftwood roots of a desperate shrub, a rosette of new life colored up in the twilight like a child’s cheeks in a brisk March wind:

…and the gneiss drew a deep blue breath from the sky.

Traveling the high, icy hills of Hawley today, I tried in vain to capture the beauty of trees ensconced in ice. But I failed, and I don’t even know why. Crappy equipment? Shitty technique? Poor lighting?

I’ll go with “D, All Of The Above.”

In fact the lighting was intense and direct, not conducive to drama, not given to revealing subtleties, not full of the warmth of the sun’s long rays closer to sunrise and sunset.

But then, some things benefit from strong light, and I was glad to have my camera along when I encountered these dentinums growing on a truncated oak:

…and this rock, a rare example of serpentinite, I think, judging by the mix of minerals and forms involved:

And everywhere I looked, the promise of Spring, giggling in faux-repose beneath its blanket of ice, planning its escape, ready to break into lightly colored leaves:

That’s the terminal bud on the end of a branch of a beech tree, ready to become a new set of leaves as soon as the weather calls it forth.

I dearly love winter, and will try to share that with you; but Spring is just so insinuated into the equasion by the lengthening days, and I’m so ready for it.

No, really!

OK, so you’re not surprised. I always take a walk. It’s what I do when I need to put politics and people behind me and connect with my source.

It was cold and clear here in the Berkshires today, with a bright light and a thinness to the air typical of a mid-winter New England day. I puttered around the house ’till mid-day to let it warm up a bit. Then I laced on a pair of aggressively cleated boots, expecting it to be icy up in the hills, and hit the road.

I was right.

I chopped a parking place in the snow bank on the side of the road where a trail should have been, and headed into the woods.

It was a different world in there, even from my little hill-town home. Every branch was heavy, every bough bent low, interlocked in a lattice of crystal beauty.

The trail proved to be an impassable non-entity, criss-crossed by saplings intertwined in an icy weave. I found myself moving instinctively through the wider maze of the woods, scanning the near-impenetrable ice crust for a plausible path, slinking low beneath the crystal lattice, without a trail, without a destination, but with the sun at 11 o’clock. I knew I could range widely in this convoluted terrain and still return to my car at the end of it all by putting the sun over my right shoulder and heading for the valley below.

It turned out that the boots I had chosen in the warmth of my ante-room were instrumental in my day’s wanderings. The snow was deep, but the crust was nearly impenetrable.

Where circumstances might have necessitated snow-shoes in another year, now I struggled up the steepening icy slopes using mountaineering techniques, pied troisiemme and piolet ramasse, though my “piolet” was an adjustable ski pole.

In all, it was a couple of miles of off-trail meanderings, somewhat evenly divided between intense concentration aimed at surviving the next hundred yards and a magical marveling at the transformation of the world around me.

Wish you were here to share this with me - it’s really something rare and special.

This is the time of winter when I start jonesing for some color - every little variation from the gray scale catches my eye. On warm days I drive the back roads, hugging the shoulders, scanning the south-facing banks and rock cuts, limping along at an unmanly pace, pissing off the pickup-driving hicks who need to get somewhere.

Yesterday afternoon, I pulled over in the little hamlet of Monroe Bridge to investigate an inch-big patch of green peeking out from under its winter finery. It was a tiny community of plants longing for a fine Spring day, but doubtless enjoying whatever sun had found its way into their little niche in the wet rocks:

And across the cleft (all of a foot away,) another community,

telegraphing its desire, hoping to be noticed when the winds of change bring a swelling, a gift of spores, Spring’s explosive release.

Tomorrow, there will be more snow; but today, they bathe in the expectant light of Love.