rain, cold, and woodsmoke
a cottage in the deep green
homespun alchemy
Posts Tagged ‘nature’
Today’s 4,000
Posted in Creativity, Poetry, tagged creative writing, haiku, modern poetry, nature, novel writing, Poetry, quiet living, Seattle, Writing on 13 Nov 2025| Leave a Comment »
With Paper Before Me
Posted in Poetry, tagged creative writing, modern poetry, nature, painting, Poetry, Serenity, travelogue, Writing on 09 Oct 2025| Leave a Comment »
with paper before me and
a pen in my hand
a cloud is
rising blooming billowing scudding
cumulus nimbus a thunderhead
dark foreboding airy bright
with paper before me and
a brush in my hand
a cloud is
gradients reflective limned
shadowed grey sunlit white
rounded flat-topped
with paper before me and
nothing in my hand
a cloud
is
Scented Pathways
Posted in Seattle, Writing, tagged creative writing, Life, Memories, nature, Travel, vignette, walking, Writing on 17 Aug 2025| 1 Comment »
I took my nose on a walk, today, and let it lead me from one memory to the next. It was a cool overcast midsummer morning, the land still damp, leaves still plump from yesterday’s sudden rain. Flowers nodded heavily, leaning from tidy beds over paved walkways like old men rising from a heavy sleep. Birds sought ripening berries through branch and bramble, and dogs led their owners from spot to spot, following their own noses.
First I tramped uphill over needles and cones, a well-trod path winding beneath conifers that lost their heads in the lifting fog. The air was redolent with resin and bark, soft earth and dew-soft ferns, and my nose remembered my time as a student at music camp, days and nights spent tucked up amidst giant sequoias, so close, so tall, that their height could not be seen, and my mind echoed with the opening beats of Copland’s Fanfare, an unexpected reveille to wake teenage musicians and fashion a memory never to be lost.
I walked onward along the ridgeline as the morning cleared, the slanting light breaking through the southern sky, the avenue warming with the summer’s rising sun. The scent of August grass, dry and seed-heavy, a mixture of soil and wood and hay and warmth, took me back to the rolling hills of my youth, slick and golden, begging us to take our cardboard squares to their tops and slide down their gentle slopes.
Farther, I passed beneath a plum tree, the path beside it filled with fallen fruit. The air was thick with a sweet, sun-stewed aroma that filled my brain with scenes of kitchens and bushel baskets and Mason jars and food mills and sacks of sugar all at the ready, as the thick preserves bubbled quietly on the stove.
Heading home, I walked along the main boulevard, wide and now sun-drenched, busy with cars and trucks. I sniffed the scents of diesel exhaust and hot pavement mingled with dust and the wafting aroma of brewing coffee. I closed my eyes and was met with the image of Jerusalem streets as I walked to the bus stop on my way to morning classes. The only thing missing was the adhan, broadcast from minarets, blaring across the awakening city.
It was a wide-ranging journey, though found within but a few miles on foot, a surprising trip through time and distance.
Vignette — 08Nov2024
Posted in Creativity, Gardening, tagged autumn, creative writing, fall colors, nature, vignette on 08 Nov 2024| Leave a Comment »
This time of year—late October, early November—my walks gravitate toward a specific corner where two trees grow. I could show you a picture of them, but then you’d only know what they look like, and not what I see.
They’re a mismatched duo, a Mutt and Jeff of trees. One is a maple, about twenty feet tall, round in shape above a sturdy trunk, with those wonderful deeply cut leaves that rustle and dance in the breeze. The other, a blue noble fir, towers over its partner at thirty-five feet, a slender cone covered with densely packed needles that shrug off the weather. They’re both handsome trees, well-formed, healthy, and in spring and summer, the maple’s green leaves are a good match to the fir’s bluish cast. This this time of year, though, they become a spectacular complementary pair as the maple leaves slowly yellow and then turn a bright, happy orange.
My steps slow as I approach them and take in their contrasts. The fir seems even bluer, set off by the maple’s fire, and as I pass I see that where their branches come close, almost touch, the maple’s leaves have yet to fade, as if the blue of the fir is leaching out, keeping them green for just a little while longer. It’s like the fir, having enjoyed the company of its companion, is urging it to stay, have one more drink, before departing for its winter slumber.
In a few weeks, the fir will stand next to the scaffolding of its dormant friend, braving the winter alone, wishing for spring, and my walks will wend away to other areas, other avenues, other vistas. The memory of the orange and blue will stay with me, make me smile through the dark of winter and the greenery of next year, until their return, and we all meet again.
Afterblow
Posted in Poetry, Seattle, tagged autumn colors, creative writing, modern poetry, nature, Poetry, Seattle, windstorm on 20 Oct 2024| Leave a Comment »
walking dawn-dewed streets
amid memories of
the night’s groaning wind
branches and twigs
bony remnants
cast around
leeward silhouettes
of gold leaf and rusted needles
Summer Nights
Posted in Creativity, Poetry, Seattle, tagged lightning, modern poetry, nature, Poetry, Seattle, summer nights, thundershower, thunderstorm on 18 Aug 2024| 2 Comments »
for some it is
the Moon’s occultation of Saturn or
the needle strikes of Perseids across a spangled sky
that speeds their heart
but for me it is
a late summer evening when
the world is parchment
I step out onto the front stoop while the wind
swollen with the scent of moisture
shakes out the carpets of August
sending heat-baked dust over distant hills
the stars take the night off as
the clouds drop down
so close I can
smell them touch them feel them seeping into my skin and
the air thicks with promise until
a flash sparks fire miles above
lighting the jumbled sky
I know it is coming I know the treat is coming
the respite from dry weeks sere days withered leaves but
it takes its time walking not running toward my eagerness
teasing me with coming attractions so mesmerizing that
when the rain begins I am surprised
it is so strong so hard so heavy that
my mind wonders about the terminal velocity of a raindrop the size of a pea and
if the drops fall as spheres or are deformed by their earthward plunge and
bang
the storm is here has crossed the ridge is overhead
its flares of light draw inward focus concentrate spin themselves into jagged threads
neighbors come out from barbecues and movie nights to
look up
exclaim at the brilliance
gasp at claps that slap their cheeks
laughing in sheer childish joy at the power of the moment and
in that moment the magic of our world ushers us into its realm
we feel a part of it enjoy it for exactly what it is
the raw audacity of it the confidence as if nothing can stand against it and survive
it is intoxicating and I am drunk with it all
happily consumed and consuming
a tiny mote in the vastness
just me
alone on the front stoop
watching nature play its greatest anthem while
I hum along with the familiar tune
that’s what does it
for me
Photo: Tim Durkan Photography
Recharging Station
Posted in Uncategorized, Writing, tagged nature, seashore, Writing on 22 Sep 2017| 2 Comments »
This morning, the ocean threw a brick at me.
My wife and I are out at the coast for a few days (we’re working things out, which is Very Good News) and, as is my wont when at the seaside, I got up early(ish) . . . earlier than she, anyway . . . and went for a walk along the shore.
Most people, when they walk along the seashore, do it in one of two ways: either they walk up along the high tide limit where the sand is still hard (but they won’t get their feet wet), or they walk down along the wave limit (where the occasional seventh wave might submerge them up to the ankles).
Yeah, that’s not me. I grew up on the Pacific coast, and the Big Blue is a critical actor in my emotional life. It’s where I go to purge my buffers and reevaluate the importance of things. Sitting on the edge of the world, glass of wine close at hand, I can look out along the curvature of the earth and watch the sun sink into the quicksilver sea; this is my heaven, my Fortress of Solitude, my recharging station. But walking along the water’s edge and not being in contact with the sea? . . . Yeah, not an option.
When I walk along the shoreline, I walk that gantlet between surf and shore. I’m always barefoot, and the water is always rushing in or flowing out around me. Sometimes this puts me knee-deep in some very cold water, but after the first five minutes, my feet don’t care anymore. They’ll complain loudly later, but for now, numbed by the northern Pacific’s chilly grasp, they’re quiet.
This morning, the colors of the water ranged (appropriately enough) from aquamarine and pale jade to cobalt blue, the deepest teal, and a series of greys from gunmetal to steel. Foam topped the curling waves and washed in on gentle rollers, highlighting the crests with white, ivory, and an algal yellow.
At one end of my walk along this section of the coast, in addition to long stretches of soft sand, there are outcrops of rocks, half-drowned at low tide, that add interest to the seascape. I walked among them, thigh-deep in the rushing grottoes, smelling the funk of barnacles and anemones warming in the early sun. Seagulls pried at the shells, hoping to find a loose one among the tightly packed multitudes, and plovers poked thin beaks between the stands, searching for worms and other digestibles. The scents of salt and seaweed mingled with the iron smell of sand and the tang of carbonate. It was . . . luscious. I felt at home. I felt at peace. I felt whole.
At the other end of my walk was the D River, the shortest river in the world (running from Devil’s Lake to the Pacific in just under 124 feet at high tide). I stood in the debouchment, where river meets the sea, and silently marked the pendulum of wave and outflow with the words “Fresh water. Salt water. Fresh water. Salt water.” as the river and the sea pulsed to and fro around my feet.
But it was midway along my trek that the Pacific got stroppy. I was walking through a rip, where the curve of the shore focuses the waves and forms a strong seiche of power. The sea pulled back her skirts to show me a graveled bed of pebbles and shells, and then launched a wall of water in my direction. Beneath that lunging froth I glimpsed a flash of red, a sizable chunk, tossed and tumbling in the clear salt sea, coming right at my shin. I stopped and saw that it was a brick, a full-sized everyday brick, red as a brick, hard as a brick, with clean sharp edges. It rolled past my foot, missing me.
Where the hell did it come from? There were no brick buildings I could see along the miles of shoreline I’d walked. The Pacific was adept at throwing pebbles up on the shore here, stones perfect for skipping across a placid lake, bits and pieces broken off from the outcrops I’d visited, but nothing the size of a mason’s brick. Nothing even half that size.
Was it personal? Was the Pacific angry with me? Had I been away from it for too long?
It’s tempting to think these things, to assign reason to an event that is completely random, but that is folly. The truth is that the Pacific, mother of my youth, heart of my soul, is just a body of salty water that has no mind, no intellect, no will, no reasoned purpose. She—and I continue to call her “she”—cannot even recognize my existence. She cannot sense anything.
I know this.
Yet, I still love this ocean, this birthplace of what I call “me,” and I will still talk to her as I walk her shores, ask her what I should do, and, depending on her mood, I will hear the answers in the murmur or the roar of her waves.
k
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 