More Growth: Past, Present, Future

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“Patience is to wait for the ice to melt

instead of breaking it.”

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Munia Khan

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“…ice contains no future ,

just the past, sealed away.

As if they’re alive, everything in the world

is sealed up inside, clear and distinct.

Ice can preserve all kinds of things

that way- cleanly, clearly.

That’s the essence of ice,

the role it plays.”

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Haruki Murakami

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“Snowflakes are one of nature’s

most fragile things,

but just look what they can do

when they stick together.”

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Vesta M. Kelly

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“Thank goodness for the first snow,

it was a reminder-

-no matter how old you became

and how much you’d seen,

things could still be new

if you were willing to believe

they still mattered.”

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Candace Bushnell

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2018

 

For the Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge:  Growth

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The Edge of Illusion

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“Dream delivers us to dream,

and there is no end to illusion.

Life is like a train of moods

like a string of beads,

and, as we pass through them,

they prove to be many-colored lenses

which paint the world their own hue. . . . ”

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Ralph Waldo Emerson

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For the Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge:  Edge

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“You’re never given a dream

without also being given the power to make it true.”
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Richard Bach

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Photos by Woodland Gnome 2016

 

Sunday Dinner: Absence

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“There is a time in life

when you expect the world to be always full of new things.

And then comes a day

when you realize that is not how it will be at all.

You see that life will become

a thing made of holes.  Absences.  Losses.

Things that were there and are no longer.

And you realize, too, that you have to grow

around and between the gaps”

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Helen Macdonald

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“How can you know what is missing

if you’ve never met it?

You must know of something’s existence

before you can notice its absence. ”

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E.L. Konigsburg

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“No matter how great the love,

the pain, the sadness, the power of a heart,

no one can recreate the sea.

Nowhere else.”

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Ondjaki

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“Your body is away from me,
but there is a window open
from my heart to yours.”

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Rumi

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It was the absence of life clinging to the rocks which I found so stunning.  Gone were the countless blue mussels, barnacles, Anemones and starfish which once colonized these rocky tidal pools.  How could every trace of them be wiped away so swiftly?

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I first walked this beach six years ago, dazzled by its beauty, diversity and abundance.  Our East Coast beaches were already dead decades ago, which made this Oregon Coast beach all the more magical.  Gulls congregated on the rocks at low tide, their calls a constant melody above the crashing waves.  Every rocky surface was owned by life:  Algaes and sea weeds rippled on the returning tides; small fish zipped around in the tidal pools.  So many strange and beautiful creatures crawled and swam glistened in the salty wash of the sea. 

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September, 2010

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But that has all changed now.   The rocks lie hard and clean, barren of all life save a few strands of algae clinging here and there.  The gulls have mostly moved on, leaving a few smaller shore birds to what little may be found to eat. 

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An occasional cluster of mussel shells and barnacles glitter like jewels in the sand, beautiful in their rarity.  And an ancient silence has descended on the beach; the primordial rhythms of wind and wave broken by no living voices of gull or sea lion or whale.

Who can explain the mystery of this sudden absence? 

And who can excuse it?

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Woodland Gnome 2016

For the Daily Post’s

Weekly Photo Challenge:  Abstract