travel

Necessary Flowers

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

In these last few days, in my corner of Vermont, we’ve experienced snow, raw cold, heavy rain this morning — and now rushing radiant sunlight.

Suddenly, as if reluctant to waste a moment, little blossoms around our house have opened — some I planted, the crocuses and grape hyacinth — but all through the flowerbeds and behind the compost are tiny blue flowers — Scilla siberica. 

When I was a novice gardener, I only planted vegetables, with some crazy notion that my labor should go solely towards what ends up on the dinner table.

This afternoon I see the pollinators are already busily working on these beautiful petals. Balance, balance.

If ‘dead’ matter has reared up this curious landscape of fiddling crickets, song sparrows, and wondering men, it must be plain even to the most devoted materialists that the matter of which he speaks contains amazing, if not dreadful, powers, and may not impossibly be, as Thomas Hardy has suggested, ‘but one mask of many worn by the Great Face behind.’

— Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey

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Glory of the Snow, Hardwick, Vermont

And A Little More Snow — What?

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Talking to my mother on the phone yesterday afternoon, I noticed through the window the heavy rain had bits of white. Snow? The white disappeared.

This morning, three inches of white spread over the porch and garden, the neighbors’ roofs and the cemetery stones and — yes — those little blue wildflowers whose names we haven’t yet determined.

I was barefoot and sweating in the garden on Saturday: Vermont.

Years ago, when I first moved to a steep backroad, I had the snow tires removed mid-April — how I regretted that. A neighbor cautioned me, like some strange commandment, Never take off your snow tires before May. Subconsciously, her advice must have rooted deeply. Maybe I should be grateful for her advice, but maybe the snow will melt this morning, too.

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Z39.50

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

On a rainy day, I’m at a cataloging class at the state library. Through the open window, rain pours from the roof. I admire the library world for its insistence on precision and order, its intensely democratic approach, the unapologetic quest for knowledge and creativity.

In Vermont, numerous tiny one-woman libraries like my own hold the same democratic importance as the large city libraries. Such a complicated network laces this system together — like Z39.50, the mysterious (for me) way library systems speak to each other and exchange information.

Later in the morning, the rain stills. Through the open window, robin sing. The teacher pauses, says, Spring’s here, and waits for just a moment, a subtle acknowledgment of the beauty of communication.

The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.

— Albert Einstein

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Community Bonding

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Written with a finger on a muddy car door in Montpelier: Spring is here! Hooray!

I mention this to my daughter at dinner, saying, I think a kid wrote this….

Why a kid? she asks. Why not a little old lady?

Why not?

A single day of rain has pushed up green.

As January’s bitter cold links people when strangers comment about the cruel weather, spring does, too. It’s finally here. What a day….

This dewdrop world
Is but a dewdrop world
And yet —

— Issa

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Sign of Spring, Hardwick, VT #9

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Come what may — more April snowflakes, cold rain, glittery frost in the weeds against the barn — in our corner of Vermont we’ve stepped across the line to spring.

Yesterday, in a chilly rain, my daughters and I peered beneath the pear trees and along the thicket of roses, now merely a brown tangle of prickly vines. But the earth reeked of thaw, of soil melting its cold frozen heart, releasing its mysteries of worm and grasping root.

Thaw begins not with warmth, but with the subtle gradations of less cold. And how darn good our earth smells, breathing.

Sparrow singing–
its tiny mouth
open.

— Buson

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Fox

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Early morning, waking my daughter for school, I see a fox through her upstairs window, dashing across the lawn, darting between the trampoline and compost pile, and disappearing behind the apple tree, down into the honeysuckle.

It’s been a long while since I’ve seen a fox, one of these brushy-tailed beauties.

I remember years ago, having a prolonged discussion with my children’s father, in a car parked at the foot of our road, down by the river. We were there so long, verbally going around and around, that the dusk settled in. Three foxes appeared from the dim landscape, weaving around our car. We sat there, watching, until that family disappeared.

Even further back, my five-year-old and I saw a silvery fox one winter afternoon. I was driving home on our back road, and we stopped. The fox leaped on a high snowbank and sat there. The day was brilliantly sunny, full of sparkling fresh snow and cold. The fox was so beautiful we might have imagined her, had both of us not seen her.

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