First Ice

This shady corner of the lake has some ice remaining, after a couple of nights in the 20's.

Today's Quote: We should notice that we are already supported at every moment. There is the earth below our feet and there is the air, filling our lungs and emptying them. We should begin from this when we need support.  Natalie Goldberg,  Writing Down the Bones

That ole Moon and Sun and Earth

Dancin around up there in the sky...and here we sit enjoying trying to see how their movements change our lives.

Stonehenge, UK

Today is Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere.  I think around noon EST the earth's orientation will shift from one direction to the other. I learned (late in life) that the sun and earth have this same orientation, and the earth doesn't change it's tilt, but is oriented differently as it  circles (really an oval).

It is not like a top, the way I always thought. 

Through the hallway to the chamber within Newgrange, on Winter Solstice dawn

You better believe if there's anything to be felt, I will feel it. 

Welcoming return of the light

The swing is about to happen again, returning of light on the longest night of the year.

Here I see my shadow from the little foot bridge over Flat Creek up in Montreat.  This is as tall as my shadow will be, as the tilt of mother earth is about to go back the other direction for 6 months.

Accept our dark shadow selves...as well as a bright shadow self.  We don't know these aspects of ourselves as well as others may, because for us they are always behind us.  But the parts of ourself that are hidden, both that which is dark and that which is brilliant, are very important for our being.  It's not just putting on a smile for other people.  They already know, they already see, our true beings are shining out for everyone.

Doves & Pigeons

So what happens to those white doves that are released at celebrations and go flying off into nowhere?  How about this white guy along with normally colored pigeons?

He's flying on the left side of this picture toward the Exxon sign.

Here he's perched right above Exxon.

And back on his wire with his grey friends.

Montanagirl, eat your heart out!  (She is a talented blogger who posts gorgeous action shots of all kinds of wild birds...so my little dove/pigeon is my civilized equivalent!)

Quote for today:

I think over again my small adventures, my fears, those small ones that seemed so big, all those vital things I had to get and to reach, and yet there is only one great thing: to live and see the great day that dawns, and the light that fills the world.

Old Innuit Song

Jack Frost visited

Shelter

I like that the gazebo at Lake Tomahawk has a wheel-chair ramp.

Quote for today:

Sometimes I go about pitying myself, and all the time I am being carried on great winds across the sky.

Chippewa, translated by Robert Bly