Tag: Wonder

So I wasn’t losing my eyesight or my mind, after all

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Back when I had an hour commute home after working an evening shift at the paper, there were a few nights when I was mesmerized by what I saw in my headlights while driving the country highways in heavy rain. As the drops splashed from the shiny black pavement, they seemed to turn into frogs that were hopping wildly. That part was freaky enough, but all of the ones I saw were leaping in the same direction, say from right to left. Hundreds of them. Thousands of them. There was no way to avoid them, either. Naturally, it was difficult to see at 60 miles an hour, and I was always anxious to get home, have a martini, and hit the sack promptly.

Why one direction? Something to do with the wind? Maybe just the angle of my headlights, so I didn’t pick up on just as many hopping in the other direction?

A few miles later, I would encounter another flock (officially, a group of frogs is called a knot, a colony, or an army, go figure) all flying in the other direction, left to right.

The phenomenon didn’t appear every time I had a heavy-rain midnight, but it did happen enough times over the decade to repeat the show, something I didn’t connect to springtime.

Turns out, as a recent Sunday Afternoon presentation at the Eastport Arts Center prompted, I wasn’t hallucinating. Didn’t need my eyes checked or a pair of glasses for driving. And wasn’t losing my mind. Frogs, toads, and salamanders have a Big Night (or two) in early spring when heavy rain, an inch or more, combines with thawing ice and snow to signal the amphibians to leave their winter shelter and return to emerging ephemeral vernal pools for breading. The high, shrill chirping chorus of peepers soon fills the night air for a few weeks after.

The temporary shallow ponds are fishless, and thus free of predators in the amphibian-breeding forest wetlands. With their job done around the time summer rolls in, the pools dry up for another year.

The bluest sky

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The intense depth of color in a frigid winter sky stirs up memories of living in the interior Far West, where its usual lack of humidity produced similar firmaments through the hottest seasons. Consider this, then, from coastal Maine, a preview of some journal entries ahead.

 

Clear wonder

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In my moves across the northern U.S., I’ve always lived in places that would get icicles in winter – some places more impressively than others. I never planned it that way, but in some locales they could grow down past floor-length windows, creating a threat to anything below. When those fell, their crash would shake the house, sometimes waking us from deep sleep. These, on the second floor at the Cobscook Quaker meetinghouse in Whiting, Maine, are modest in comparison.

 

Naturally, I’ve collected tips on writing over the years

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Often, writers’ advice can be extended to life beyond writing itself. Here’s a sampling.

  1. “Trust your idea, and just start writing. It can seem like a huge task, especially if you have had your work commissioned and there is a relatively fixed deadline, but once you start putting words on the page it will come together, and there is always someone you can ask for a little bit of support.” – Jaime Breitnauer
  2. “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” – Anton Chekhov
  3. “Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.” – Elmore Leonard
  4. “It has become increasingly plain to me that the very excellent organization of a long book or the finest perceptions and judgment in time of revision do not go well with liquor. A short story can be written on the bottle, but for a novel you need the mental speed that enables you to keep the whole pattern inside your head and ruthlessly sacrifice the sideshows … I would give anything if I hadn’t written Part III of Tender Is the Night entirely on stimulant.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
  5. “[S]tay focused and write what you enjoy writing. Don’t write for money or follow the trends of what might be selling at the time. Write something that you cannot only be proud of, but also enjoy the process of writing.” – Christopher J. Moore
  6. “Read it aloud to yourself because that’s the only way to be sure the rhythms of the sentences are OK (prose rhythms are too complex and subtle to be thought out—they can be got right only by ear).” – Diana Athill
  7. “Write what you love, what truly piques your curiosity every day. I’ve met authors who have told me they were sick of the subject matter in their books by the time they came out. I’m so glad I don’t feel this way!” – Haley Shapley
  8. “Fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money.” – Jonathan Franzen
  9. “Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was, too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.” — Katherine Mansfield
  10. “How do you write? You write, man, you write, that’s how, and you do it the way the old English walnut tree puts forth leaf and fruit every year by the thousands. … If you practice an art faithfully, it will make you wise, and most writers can use a little wising up.” – William Saroyan

Our winters from the perspective of neighboring St. Croix Island

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The French learned some harsh lessons in their attempt to establish their first North American settlement on a small island perhaps ten miles north of where I know live.

“It was difficult to know this country without having wintered there; for on arriving in summer everything is very pleasant on account of the woods, the beautiful landscapes, and the fine fishing for the many kinds of fish we found there,” Samuel Champlain wrote. “There are six months of winter in that country.”

I’ve previously contended that New England has a five- or six-month winter, so that passage offers me some confirmation.

As that winter dragged on, however, more than half of the men and boys developed what Champlain called a “mal de la terre,” or “land sickness” – scurvy, a disease caused by Vitamin C deficiency. It was common among sailors stuck on ships for months at a time, and many captains knew to keep citrus fruits on board, or beverages made from evergreen tree needles. During the European Age of Sail between 1500 and 1800, it was assumed that half of all crews would die of scurvy.

It wasn’t pretty.

“Their teeth barely held in place, and could be removed with the fingers without causing pain,” Champlain wrote of the horrific suffering the settlers endured over the winter of 1604-1605. “This excess flesh was often cut away, which caused them to bleed extensively from the mouth.”

Eat your apples and oranges and grapefruit, then, as well as lemons and limes.

Notes from a Yule tree search in the woods

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The tree the kid wants ain’t natchural! At least not the ones we’ve cut from the wild.

What we find in the woods are typically lopsided, with the growth mostly to one side. And they tend to be more open than full, which can have its own appeal when it comes to adding ornaments.

Not that she perceives that on her arrival from the metropolis.

She’s always been challenging and demanding.

 

In our longest nights

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

How long the day now? Our shortest is a mere 8¾ hours of visible sun if the clouds permit, barely a third of the 24-hour cycle.

Where I live, we’ve now reached the earliest sunsets. They’ll be inching later by the solstice.

Enjoy the long nights, then. Perhaps by a fire but especially in sleep. Or even out, bundled up, viewing Northern Lights and meteor showers.