The sun cuts low through winter trees, woodsmoke hangs in the air. Walking through the forest one day I find what’s left of a raven dance, the steps clear in the snow. I can see where a raven has scratched it’s beak back and forth drawing concentric lines. As part …
I rise before the sun, the scratchy radio voices catalog what bad things have happened in the world while I slept. But the world tells a different story– out the old farmhouse window the dawn blooms impossible colours against the somnabulant landscape. Two ravens sit warily in the orchard on …
The Year wanes; leaves wither and go dancing off into the land of moldering and glimmering bone colours. Work is coming together after the many distractions and events of short summer. Since I was a young boy, I have drawn dragons. There is something …
This morning, I walked into the woods. past the remains of human industry, moldering in the fresh shoots, turning brown and grey, across the stepping stone ford into the realm of the forest, where the primal imagination is at home and feels its roots. Tree roots twist in suggestive shapes; …
I’ve just returned from a three-week trip to Britain. I taught a class about carving Iron Age ornamentation in wood, helped with a sword course that my friend Owen Bush was teaching and presented at a swordsmithing conference. Owens workshop and home “Bushfire Forge” is an amazing place to do …
Snowshoe to work. Snow like frozen waves across the field. Buds frost spiked. Brush wolf tracks across watering hole. Startling green watercress. Patterns emerge amid lengthening days. More storms blow through, the world is blue tinged inside where windows are blocked by snowdrifts. The wind whistles high through a crack …
Snow falls on snow, then more snow falls. Somewhere in the forested hills the bear sow and her cubs hibernate and the moose shifts about in his winter yard. It is snowshoe weather, too deep for skis. I spent the day yesterday shoveling the snow from the roof of my …
The year dims down towards its last gasp. Black mornings slowly merge into short days, but the work pace doesn’t slacken. Some mornings I am starting the forge at six thirty and working in a bubble of light like a craft in an ocean of darkness. The open door gapes …
Late November brings snowstorms. The field behind my forge turns white and grey, obscured by pencil lines of snow. Ground freezes and propane is sluggish and recalcitrant in the mornings. Then as the month turns, it becomes warmer, snow turns to mist, the ground thaws. Creatures come out of their …
As I consider the rumpled clouds, (white, gray, blue) a clump of five chickadees whirs up to the barren rose bush I’m standing next to. They rush about from branch to branch yelling chick-a-dee-dee-dee. I go in the house and come back with my camera. They wait for me and …