In the even’tide dimness two doves startle from maple haven, from wildmeadow haven, a cottontail hops slowly down the path. A piece of blue glass pulled from the dirt; it is for him.

Today must be the day to abandon dogs, it’s rainy. They look into every car that goes by and into every face. The sherriff rolls up. Once I walked over a mountain dirt road with a dog named Rain-Rain.

Jingle jangle shnuffling invisible dog on dutiful night patrol without pause, through the yard, round the corner, he's gone…and late in the nightness a freight whistle turns musical in half-dreaming, playing long and melodic. No West but nuwest, the wilderness inside. Tall trees fall.

Black fur with big eyes soft slow and unflurried amongst the sweet fern and pussy toes, under white pine boughs. There's a nest in a low branch crotch made of moss & pine needles. Bending without breaking.

Junco ringing like a bell!

Depthford pink – no flower guides!---and namesake tiny toads. Hawkweed and dark crawling blackberries to swallow, sourfully. Sweet, sweet sorrow till the day I die. Soapwort, chives, lemon balm, applemint, asparagus.

Foggy crescent moon through white pines hand in hand with lightening bug against black needles. This - this - will be a painting.

red orange violet green: mushrooms all. Moss, fern and Indian pipe. Jay, crow, wood thrush and wren. Bat shrudders behind shutters, lost energy with each tremble. A lucky stone sheared by stress or blows reveals its clean, fresh, pure surface…glistening white. Force overwhelming but yielding clarity.

The roof begins to leak, drip drip through the white ceiling crack. (Solaris, The Last Wave, the woman artist in Cleveland Museum) Cardinal whistle in the falling rain, in the pine fog.

“Our life is a balance of liturgy, work and lectio divina. We try to follow our 12th century Cistercian founders by becoming lovers of the place, lovers of the sisters, and lovers of the Rule.” Trappistine Chocolate company

The Big Open: On Foot Across Tibet's Chang Tang by Rick Ridgeway Publishers Weekly sez: "Adventure writer Ridgeway (The Shadow of Kilimanjaro) crafts an urgent, poetic narrative as he guides readers across Tibet’s barren and treacherous northern plateau in search of the calving grounds of the chiru, an endangered antelope. Along with his three companions-late nature photographer Galen Rowell, Conrad Anker, who wrote the foreword, and Jimmy Chin-the seasoned mountaineer traces the female chiru’s 200-mile migration route."

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