The warming sun and the gentle breezes of Spring always turn my thoughts to Geoffrey Chaucer. The opening lines of his beloved poem, The Canterbury Tales, the words and sound of the words, are music to me:
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licóu
Of which vertú engendred is the flour;
Chaucer, who lived in the late 1300s, was the first significant poet of the English language.… Continue reading
Happy Spring!
After a long, wet winter, spring’s light and warmth are a welcome relief. But, for me, it’s also a mixed blessing. A stirring time of year when the earth’s renewal is no longer a mere promise but something tangible.
There’s a different cast of light now. That patina of green you see around the trees and brush is a sign that the sap is stirring, that the weather is warming.… Continue reading
A gale blew through Boundary Pass on Monday. It was a powerful storm that seemed lightweight initially but eventually packed a mean punch. The power went off around bedtime, branches fell on the roof. We huddled in bed as the storm raged outside, driving swarms of logs, smashing them into the rocks at the base of our cliff.… Continue reading
It’s interesting how a childhood experience can signify something entirely different decades later.
Perhaps your memory of a happy time turns out to be unsettling in later years. Or, as in this case, a frightening afternoon as a child turns out to be something wondrous and formative much later in life.
This happened to me on a snowy winter’s day, a Sunday in 1963, in West Vancouver.… Continue reading