Forest

The Sensual Stars

Posted on December 8, 2012 by Laura

Don’t you just love to read in bed on a cold day? Particularly, if it is damp and rainy? I do.

The cold outside made the windows all fog over, after I added a little heating. This meant, I did not have much of a view upstairs, but even so, it was certainly bright enough to read.

It is always warmer in the loft than it is on the main level, heat rises. Still it is nice to get right in bed and roll up cozy in layers of blankets on a lazy afternoon.

The book is The Starry Room, a gift from my friend D, who is also a writer as well as an off-grid and Tiny House enthusiast. He thought I would enjoy the book in the quiet of THO’s forest and he was right. The Author Fred Schaaf words are intuitive and sensual, as well as very much in tune with the sky and the ebb and flow of nature. He writes,”we should not forget ourselves in our role as appreciators in these heavens we study. There is no feeling of insignificance or meaninglessness for anyone who is an active participant in this appreciation, which not only involves us in the cosmos but makes us intimate with it as only friends or lovers can be. And only through the medium of not just our senses, thought, and feeling but also through a sky we can have this involvement.”

He is not quite so lyrical as my hero Erazim Kohák, but even so he speaks to the issue of bonds and connections that we humans can can attain if we take a little time to understand. I like this about the book, very much. Connection to life, matters a lot to me.

“There is creative reading as well as creative writing.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Categories: Art, Forest, Nature, Open your eyes, Simple living | Tags: ebb and flow, fred schaaf, lazy afternoon, nature | 2 Comments

Cure the Common Cold

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Laura

What should I choose for a heat source? I am still not sure. Full column is featured at Tiny House Listings.

Categories: Forest, Off Grid, Ontario, Open your eyes, Simple living, Sustainable living, Tiny House Ontario | Tags: heat source, nature | 1 Comment

Me & My Shadows

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Laura

The last leaves are now just reflections of nearly forgotten memories, cast like shadows on the wall.

Nelson Mandela said “there is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.” I think he is right. I have not yet met the goals that I have set for myself and I know that once I attain these there will always be more. There is always more to come, I think, even beyond death there is more.

I hope that I still have a lot of time to work my life plan out, but one never really knows. It seems to me that my future life is set out like a dinner party to which I have have not been invited yet. Still, I can’t help it! I hope that Judy Chicago set the table for me! Wouldn’t it be wonderful to sit in on this dinner party with all the fantastic attendees?

But, I don’t know what this life has in store for me. The future, my future, just like everyone else’s is somewhere just beyond my grasp. My future exists only like the shadows of last years leaves which promise that there will be other springs; other falls.

I think about Aesop’s warning to “beware that you do not lose the substance by grasping at the shadow”. I could use some illumination, but in these short days when the sun casts so much shadow it is not always easy to find the light that will surely come again. It is easier to focus on the unreachable shadows which are long, sleek, and mysterious.

Thankfully, I can do some shadow exploration tomorrow when I return to THO. I can’t help it! I wonder what is waiting there for me? I know it will be my home, my land, my friends and family. I know that there is a big party at home this weekend coming. What else is waiting in tomorrow’s shadow?

Categories: Art, Erazim Kohák, Family, Forest, Open your eyes, Tiny House Ontario, View, Writing | Tags: nature | 2 Comments

The Love of the Land

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Laura

What I loved the most about my dad was his deep and thriving love of the land. He was a farmer who lived not too far away from the place in which Tiny House Ontario is built. He dreamed of owning expansive property where he make a living ploughing straight long furrows into the earth and filling them with seeds.

This love of the land is one thing where my dad and I found common ground. I absolutely love the earth! I love the sky, the soil, the rocks, the trees, the critters and every single natural thing that sprouts from the Mother Earth. I am the sort of person who could spend a day looking at a tiny mushroom and marvel in the wonder of it.

Too, like Erazim Kohák, I find that the former human interaction with land puzzling and I feel strongly connected to this as well. An unexpected human thing left behind and out of place in the natural world leaves me with thousands of questions. On my land, about a half kilometre from THO, there are many small and random stone cairns which draw me back to them time and time again. They are quite curious because they are way up on the top of the escarpment far away from the low laying fields. My people, farmers, would never have carried stones for futility, so they came before the Irish parts of me settled here 150 years ago.

Here, in a crescent of stone, is my beloved cousin S (son of my father’s twin); he is also drawn to and fascinated with the cairns on our historic family land. The pull of them on us, is strong and magical; we are connected.

Did you find our gorgeous little M who is hiding?

Categories: Erazim Kohák, Family, Forest, Friendship, Magical, Off Grid, Ontario, Tiny House Ontario | 3 Comments

Assurance

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Laura

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” ~ Rachel Carson

Now, it is late in the fall of the year. It is clear now for light to come to the forest floor because the leaves are off of the trees. When I walk back toward the escarpment I am able to see across the fields below; my eyes carry me through the forests and clearings and there I spot a couple of sections of the Rideau Canal. The smell of fall is deep and soothing. Soon the damp leaves and twigs will decay to soil and produce energy for the rebirth in spring, that will surely follow the long winter cold.

The days are warm enough that with a fleece and thin gloves it is comfortable. The forest is always comfortable for me.

I hope you will take the opportunity before it is too cold, to enjoy whatever the small slice of natural world you can find in your environment.

Soon, I will have to make this walk with snow shoes.

Peace out.