Setting Sail into the Storm

One hundred years ago and only the old watermen would have known: a great storm is approaching. So late in the year, the lowering sky and restless wind could be chalked up to October’s moods. But now, the Weather Channel blares drama from every flatscreen.

OK, I’ll confess: I’m right there with them, those eager meteorologists. This is their moment, and it’s the best reality show on TV, stealing the ratings from not only Real Housewives and Storage Wars, but the last gasps of the Presidential election. There’s good old Jim Cantore, knee-deep in surf, gamely reporting at the risk of his own dry socks.

I love this stuff. I grew up with a northern fresh-water version of bad weather, doing homework by lantern light and cooking on the fireplace though fierce winter storms. You can’t scare me. So although my hotel is closing at five tonight due to a mandatory evacuation of low-lying St. George Island, I don’t want to go.

I’ve planned this trip for months! It’s my reward for soldiering through the grueling house dissolution project. Not the parental home this time, but my own. And along comes the Perfect Storm, just in time to derail my get-away. I want to curl up here in this hotel, in my nest of white comforters and pillows, TV remote in hand and watch the river rage from my room, perched high and dry above the waves.

The wind has slowly built its strength over the last three days, and now is an insistent presence. At first I was disappointed to get a room on the west side of the building, until I visited a friend this morning. There on the sunrise side, with its nice view of bay and dock, what met me was a rude and pushy wind, cold enough to make you want to shut the windows. So now I am glad to be back on my leeward side.

When the storm gets nearer the wind will turn and make a nasty onshore assault, but at the moment I’m enjoying the shelter of the building at my back, hot tea in my hands, while I watch the small trees toss their manes and marsh grasses bow. The arc of each gust pushes a crescent of riffles across the slate gray surface.

I should be packing. I don’t want to go. I like my high perch, a good view and well away from any big trees that might decide to fly around. Somehow I think the hotel will be better at keeping its lights on than my home. And without my dogs, home is cold comfort indeed.

Besides, the gulls seem unconcerned. They sail the wind as if it were a summer breeze, so perfectly formed for gliding, their long tapered wings only moving when they head into the wind. Look: they are busy now diving and fishing. There are hundreds of birds, all over the river. The more I look, the more I see. I want to join them, these small darts hanging on the wind.

I feel a sweet breath of calm between wind gusts, but they are getting shorter. The next blast follows on the heels of the one, nipping, chasing, hurrying to join the storm.

I love bad weather. You can’t scare me, most of the time. Last hurricane, though, it got to me. In the howling night of Irene, at home in the swamp forest, the grinding shriek of the wind came in whirling thrusts and woke me in time to hear a massive oak smack down just outside my bedroom window. I grabbed my big dog in a bear hug and burrowed beneath the quilts, shaking like a leaf.

A storm is an engine: heat and moisture help set it into motion, then its low pressure center becomes a black hole, hoovering everything into itself. This ravening wind churns along ocean currents, sucking sand, devouring islands, hurling trees about like toothpicks. It’s nothing personal; we are but grains of sand to rearrange.

Sandy’s pull is strong now. I see clouds racing to meet her. Leaves are pulled loose and sprayed across the water. They call up from downstairs and want to know when I am leaving. I eye the water, beginning to creep across the road. The pressure is dropping and the pressure is on: I need to leave before it is no longer an option.

The day grows darker and it’s time to go. The thought of setting sail in my car frightens me. Where will I feel this safe again? When I admit that I am afraid, I don’t know who I am.

I pulled up anchor on my life, this year. I walked a path that would have either saved or sold my house, and it sold. Clearing out all my possessions, I felt the ache of loss as I weighed each thing in my hand, as I chose again and again to let go and say goodbye to objects I thought I’d have forever.

I’ve found a new lightness, imagining I’m as free as those gulls gliding on the wind, but now it’s time to leave the earth, to allow my feet to lift, to feel that infinitesimal space between me and solid earth. It feels like an enormous gulf, and I flail wildly for a sense of up and down.

I love bad weather, I tell my self. I want to set sail, ride the wind. But now that the time is here, my heart is in my mouth.

Footprints

For a Michigander, summer seems to last forever in the Southern Maryland. Of course, I’ve been preoccupied with the Big Move, but today, a fortnight past Equinox and I’m marveling: suddenly the forest has been glazed with transparent  yellow. Leaves are floating to earth on the steady breeze off the river like a shower of golden coins.

new abode

My new abode is in the same neighborhood, but a world away. As someone who craves wilderness and loves the river I’m in heaven. From my former home I could walk to the bank, library and grocery, and often heard the highway sounds, despite my wooded setting. Now, I hear only the wind (boats and planes too, occasionally).

My former house was a grand home, a generously proportioned and welcoming space. I adored it and enjoyed it to the hilt. As a single woman I managed to create a family home: a place of gathering, shelter and community. I built the most wonderful art workspace I’ve ever had, and I shared my hearth with many beloved friends and fascinating strangers. The house earned many names: Clearwell, School of Witchcraft & Artistry, Home for Wayward Girls, Pet Cemetery and finally, the name that stuck: The Holy Unpredictable Manor.

Alas, in recent years the Holy Unpredictable Manor came to be more of burden than I wanted to carry. More time, more money were needed to keep up the property, and I was changing, moving toward  something new, where my efforts and direction were not based so much in the material world. I see it in my creative life as well. Having just purged and relocated my studio, joyfully selling and giving art to many people and places, I’m struck by the physical load of my painters life.

Writing is occupying more of my attention, as is digital art, and these are so much more portable than the crates of supplies and stacks of canvases I just relocated.

new outdoor studio

I’m not abandoning my painting. My love of that 15th century technology goes on, there are landscapes I long to dwell in on canvas. And I have students now, a new generation curious about the Old Ways. But I see a bigger picture, and a smaller footprint, for my life going forward.

Right There, or Everyday Miracles

It’s right there, just outside your window: an incredible world filled with (magic, love, science, energy, mystery, god, light, LIFE). A world where the smallest thing is vital, integral to the whole. Where your breath is as necessary as air, where angels really do dance on the head of a pin.

Just step outside and let the modern din, as alluring as it is, fade back. Listen: bird, plane, crickets, another bird, grasses waving. Look: sky filled with clouds like wings, deepening from white to cream to gold in the lengthening light.

© Kerry Wixted

It can be so easy to miss, these things, what with all the worries in your world: hurry, money, late, bills, gallop through your day, always reaching further than you fear you can reach. No room for the moment when a Damsel Fly (some call them darners) lands on your hand. She chooses you as the stable place to unfurl new wings. To accustom her new body to air before lifting off.

See the rainbows in her stained-glass wings. See the green-gold scales, irridescent armour protecting her beating heart. See the bulbous insect eyes, comically large, that see your world through a kaleidescope. She’s tender, pulsing, driven by hunger, born to move in the world, alive. She lifts off your hand, ready to fly.

© Maryland Sierra Club

I met her while kayaking earlier this week on the Mattawoman River. Considered one of the last pristine rivers in Maryland, it’s a major nursery for sport fish and other wildlife.

Just a little ways away, right now, lotuses are furling for the night, their generous cups closing until dawn. Their velvet green leaves, big as dinner-plates, ripple, floating. Droplets of water beading like mercury. beads and rolls off the rich . The water is warm silk, the boat parts the way through the lotus forest, somehow not an intruder. Green frog with satisfied grin watches from a floating leaf island. His tiny cousin climbs aboard. Small as a fingernail and perfectly froggy in every way; his orange eyes blink, unafraid.

Froggy rides with us further upriver. This creature that swam below the surface just days ago now sails through the upper world. He lost his swimmer’s tail ashe grew strong legs, preparing to begin a new life above the mirror’s surface. Now he’s on the prow of our craft. vivid green-apple green, skin patterned with leaf-llke veins, fading to cool lemon-white on his belly, punctuated toes ready to grasp or release; dead useful.

© D Finnecy

We paddle against wind and current, a proud craft with figurehead on the prow. Somewhat later, scratching ashore on gravel bank, Froggy debarks into his uncertain future. Happy hunting, my friend.

Here in this water our life begins, our sustenance is generated, life arises again and again every moment. Sun spun to sugar, consumed by tiny creatures that feed the tadpole, destined to be frog. CO2 into oxygen, caterpillar to butterfly, jellied egg to trophy bass, muddy seed to transcendent lotus: the everyday miracles are countless, and everywhere you look.

© Mr. T in DC

Now the sun slips below and only the high wings of the sky still beam us light. Tree swallows begin their dusk ballet and we glide on the outgoing tide, motionless, while the birds fly low and fast over the water snatching their evening meal. They pass so close we hear the flap of feathery wings rustle, as if we were invisible to them.

The lifeblood of these creatures flows around us, buoying the boat, carrying food and messages, pulsing with a heartbeat of current and tide. What happens miles away will determine the story here.

One day when you mow your lawn and dump the clippings in that low spot behind the garage, you may notice a little water moving.The grass clippings, lush with fertilizer, send plant nutrients trickling down, from drain to ditch to creek to river and sea. En route, your contribution joins all the other small amounts of fertilizer and excrement ultimately fouling the River and Bay as they feed great green clots of algae that suck all the oxygen from the water, creating ‘dead zones’ where no fish or crabs can live.

It’s a messenger, the water. It carries your chemical story into their world, but returns a message as well. Listen: in that quiet little shimmer there’s a pulse, a movement not unlike your own. I’m heading to the sea, taking your messages with me. Don’t you want to come along?

River gets bigger, finally spreads out into shimmering marsh lands, whole worlds of wild rice, spatterdock, pickeralweed and lotus, where young bass grow up to be sport fish. Where green frogs grin and lotuses unfurl and soaring birds eat their fill of flying things over the sunset river. You belong here, too.

© G B Glide

Today in the Garden: Surprise Gifts

I went to the garden the other day for solitude. To my surprise, five children under 7 ran up alongside my car, squealing about the dogs and can we play with them?

Two girls and three boys were looking for something to do while their families set up for a big wedding at the community center. They chased the dogs in happy circles and were hugely comical trying to help me move the heavy wheelbarrow with a flat tire. They were so eager!

A fellow gardener had ordered a truckload of leaf mulch and my mission was to spread this wonderful black soil around my irises, radishes, spinach, broccoli, red cabbage and day lilies. I had lots of help. There was great competition for the big shovel. Then everyone wanted their own trowel, so more were found.

“Tuck those plants in, put that nice black blanket around them, like your mommy tucks you in at night.” And so they spread the leaf-gro around the young plants then helped me water.

Before they left, I showed them how to pull a carrot. One of my all time favorite things is to watch a child discover a natural miracle. It’s so rewarding to see the astonishment on their bright faces when the familiar orange food comes out of the soil, and after hosing off the bright orange root, they experience the taste of real food.

I was looking for solitude when I went to the garden. But I received a different kind of gift. I guess we don’t always know what we need, until we get it.

Headwinds

I took the dogs to the river today, the sun was out! We’ve all been indoors too much, writing, painting, cooking. Today, walking was the first priority.

The winter beech leaves can be quite a bright golden peach in the winter, contrasted with the drabness of dried leaves and bark. The green of moss and holly are most welcome. Add the blue sky and you have a beautiful winter palette.

Of course the dogs were ecstatic. Oh, the joys of sniffing! Seneca forgets she’s a gimpy oldster at the park (this one) and romps like a puppy, a comical sight as she seems to gallop in slow motion. When we rounded the path to approach the boardwalk, a brisk wind was blowing off the river.

This is often the case; inland even a few yards the climate can feel very different from what’s happening on the water. Today, this strong, steady breeze was whipping the shallows into tiny whitecaps, making a frothy sound. And the bare branches were making that distinctive wintery roar. My hair flew around and I felt the cold come through the buttons of my jacket.

In the marsh a few groups of mallards were chattering nearby, then further back a flock of Canada geese rose up and make a V heading toward open water. But in the stiff breeze they seemed to hang motionless in the air. They were moving forward very slowly, and not really moving their wings. The wind alone was holding them aloft. It was eerie and beautiful, these big birds floating strongly, as if they reached the river on will alone.

Sometimes where we are trying to go is harder to reach than we expect. But maybe there is an added lift, an unlikely gift, from the obstacle.

Summer Solstice

I rose this morning at 5 and the sky was already growing light, the birds already stirring. I made coffee and met friend Carol to greet the Solstice sun at Calvert Manor, reputed to be a site where John Smith and Pocahantas made camp in 1608. Clouds prevailed, preventing a direct view of the solar orb, but that did nothing to dampen the beauty of the morning, as you can see in the following photographs.

Subtle light

like a Monet painting

Spatterdock, a relative of the lotus, home of many big fish

the Great Blue

The Morning of the World – moments before, deer ran across under the trees.

offerings

happy dogs

All images ©2011 Carol Burbank

River ArtFest!! This Saturday in Indian Head, MD

Come visit me at River Artfest this weekend!

Potomac Sunset, oil on canvas

I’ll be demonstrating oil painting and showing some recent work, along with dozens of other interesting exhibitors, all on the beautiful Village Green in Indian Head, MD. Come and visit and enjoy all the art, craft, music, food and general summer joy. River Artfest is Charles Co. Maryland‘s annual festival celebrating the arts and all of our local rivers.

If you can’t make it to Indian Head, next weekend I’ll be at the June Moyaone Market. If you’re not near Maryland, get outside and celebrate summer and your own local waterways.

And if you need some cool river water while you’re in Indian Head,  there are bike and kayak rentals at Up the Creek, down on the Mattawoman river.

River Artfest 2011
Saturday, June 11
11:00 am – 5:00 pm
on the Village Green
Indian Head, MD
(Directions, click here.)

The Village Green will be filled with over 65 visual artists, environmental, historical, and educational exhibitors, plus nonstop music and dance performances on two stages throughout the day.  You can even do “Yoga on the Green”  at 10:00 am.

Bring your family and friends and come join us for an enjoyable, relaxing, and refreshing day this Saturday in Indian Head.  Great art, great exhibits, great performances, and great fun in the great outdoors!  Hope to see you there!