Plague Journal, The Woods At Dawn
Today I awakened before dawn intent on walking into nearby Almond Marsh before sunrise. I enjoy taking a walk with camera in hand. Predictably the camera is an aid to careful observation. A camera is a mechanical device that records only what the lens captures, without the distractions of a human mind. Are we not always victims of distraction, our minds process a range of sensory information, visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and taste? The brain is a multitasking wonder, and under normal circumstances I am distracted by distraction. Holding a camera mitigates, encourages a narrowing of intention. I need to think with the logic of a camera, to imagine what the lens sees….
I knew it was cold. It is winter after all. In the course of the short walk I occasionally removed gloves to operate the camera. Within minutes my 
finger tips ached with the cold. The dull ache is a sign of single digit cold. It was a five degree morning before sun up.
I stood for a moment on our rear deck. The turquoise deck chairs appeared as snow sculptures. Many weeks will pass before they are again used.
At the start of my walk I paused at the beginning of the creek that flows into the marsh. The creek is a source of life for the vegetation, for the wild animals that live in the marsh. I thought of the dinner plate sized snapping turtle that we released in the creek this past summer. He/she is hibernating deep in the mud somewhere along this creek bed.
The creek was my focus. Walking into the marsh before sun up would be my best chance to see some wild life. I was told of two deer that came out of the marsh last week and stood at our back yard. This morning I only saw one lone squirrel having a chattering conversation with itself as it made its way tree to tree.
I walked in near silence. The ice crystals under foot made a muted noise compacted by my footfall. In the distance I barely heard the sound of traffic 
on Randall road.
There were plenty of wild animal tracks in the snow. My guess is that there are many wild rabbits. I know raccoon, and opossum live in the marsh.
The big surprise of my morning walk was a view of a full moon, setting at horizons edge. At 
dawn and dusk I notice that change occurs quickly. When the sun or moon are in proximity to the horizon, you can detect the spin of the earth on its axis. It is a strange sensation to know concretely that one stands on a small planet, in a sweet-spot, elliptical orbit that supports life around our sun, that our solar system rotates on the edge of the 
wheel of the milky way galaxy. I shudder inwardly that I know this.
Returning to the house, I thawed my chilled fingers. The tulips were purchased day before yesterday, tulips to remind me that spring is coming.
4 thoughts on “Plague Journal, The Woods At Dawn”
There is Just One Sure Harmony
There’s just one sure harmony: follow the Way.
But how will you know the Way?
It has no quality or form.
It hides in implication.
It expresses nature to its smallest point.
It inhabits all motion.
The Way is a fountain of sense and memory.
The Way is the source of everything known,
without exception.
There’s only one way to understand the source:
accept it.
-Tao Te Ching
The words of the old Master Lao Tsu point to what cannot be said.
As an adjunct to your reverence for the sunrise I am offering a passage from Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows. These few words from Chapter 7, Piper at the Gates of Dawn, is one of my all time favorite pieces of literature.
“This is the place of my song-dream, the place the music played to me,’ whispered the Rat, as if in a trance. ‘Here, in this holy place, here if anywhere, surely we shall find Him!”
Then suddenly the Mole felt a great Awe fall upon him, an awe that turned his muscles to water, bowed his head, and rooted his feet to the ground. It was no panic terror–indeed he felt wonderfully at peace and happy–but it was an awe that smote and held him and, without seeing, he knew it could only mean that some august Presence was very, very near. With difficulty he turned to look for his friend and saw him at his side cowed, stricken, and trembling violently. And still there was utter silence in the populous bird-haunted branches around them; and still the light grew and grew.
Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fullness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humourously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.
‘Rat!’ he found breath to whisper, shaking. ‘Are you afraid?’
‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love. ‘Afraid! Of HIM? O, never, never! And yet–and yet–O, Mole, I am afraid!’
Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.
Sudden and magnificent, the sun’s broad golden disc showed itself over the horizon facing them; and the first rays, shooting across the level water-meadows, took the animals full in the eyes and dazzled them. When they were able to look once more, the Vision had vanished, and the air was full of the carol of birds that hailed the dawn.
As they stared blankly in dumb misery deepening as they slowly realised all they had seen and all they had lost, a capricious little breeze, dancing up from the surface of the water, tossed the aspens, shook the dewy roses and blew lightly and caressingly in their faces; and with its soft touch came instant oblivion. For this is the last best gift that the kindly demi-god is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before.
“Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before.”
Magnificent. There is nothing left to say.