“ And I’m split in half, but that’ll have to do, ooh, ooh…”

Noah Kahan, “Stick Season“

“The beauty of things was born before eyes and sufficient to itself, the heart-breaking beauty
Will remain when there is no heart to break for it.”

robinson jeffers, “Credo”

My friend Jane recently wrote that there are two great things about living in Juneau: leaving and coming back. 

I’m catching up on being home. It is good to be back. Most recently, I withstood the sensory shock of blue skies, palm trees, and balmy weather in Southern California. Monday morning in the woods with Cedar filled my lungs and spirt with some dark moist November version of joy and dread—a feeling evoked in my twisted brain by T.S. Eliot’s phrase “woodsong fog.” 

Walking the big trees, I realized we’re smack dab in the middle of what Vermonters call “stick season.” My old buddy Jim introduced me to Noah Kahan, and it turns out that Katie’s a fan, too.

While I’m not planning on “drink[ing] alcohol ’til my friends come home for Christmas,” as Kahan puts it in “Stick Season,” (a lament of a lost love from a pining [ha ha] young man), I get the temptation. 

We have no snow. So the sticks stand out. But this ain’t Vermont. In our temperate coniferous rain forest, stick season gives a nice foil for all of the green that’s thriving. This week, I’ve been struck by the intricacy and resilience of the mini-verdure: sugar-scoop, water parsley, bunchberry dogwood, hairmoss, and Parmeliacae lichen, to name just a few.

Today the same Jane posted on social media a piece about how she needs to open herself up to view art. She scolds the “been there done that” iPhone snapping crowd in front of the Mona Lisa.

“What did they miss?  ‘The actual appalling presence,” Robinson Jeffers would call it….Stand there in front of [The Mona Lisa] for ten, twenty, thirty minutes and let it look you in the eye. Then it will show itself to you in a way you never expected.  It will not show itself that way to anyone else’s eyes but yours.”

Jane, Facebook

It hit me that maybe I’m doing something similar to Jane in her art museums here on my daily dog trods. I’m letting myself see what some might see in thirty minutes in front of a painting; it just takes me a lot longer. 

Today I marveled for the thousandth time about the “trees on tiptoes,” and thought about the now invisible nurse stumps that formed their perches. I had some big half-thoughts about how my father’s absence now shapes my foundation, and how through a similar process, my other ancestors may be absently formative in the shapes I take in the world. 

And then Cedar brushed by me en route to some crazy smell party, and I thought about Robinson Jeffers some more. I take some consolation these days in what I used to see as his bleak attitude. The ragged, dying and thriving forest behind home is good testament to the fact that things keep on going in a pretty good and green way long after me. 

That’ll have to do, ooh, ooh.

My friend Scott recently sent me a powerful set of reflections—moments of awakening, I’d say— each paired with an image of sunrise. The piece begins with a saying attributed to the Buddha: “Each morning, we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.”

Shit. That’s a lot of pressure for days like this.  Sunrise was supposed to be at 7:44 this morning and it’s going to take a leap of faith to believe that it happened. Cedar and I walked for about 30 minutes right around then, and although it was technically light, it was stingy, dark, wet, grey light—plenty for Cedar to go squirrel chasing, but I could barely see the chaser or the chasee. 

As for the title of this post, maybe the drear (a word I just made up), has put me in a Hemingway mood. We’re no Lost Generation, but our kids, especially, have been through some strange times. The war in Ukraine rages, the election deniers and wanna-be autocrats push democracy though one stress test after another (it seems to be surviving!), the climate data are bad and worsening, Covid variants do their thing, but Cedar stays steady at her own helm (steering for squirrels or birds or the next swim). 

We have had a few moments of reprieve from the deep November grey of late. And I’ve recently had a chance to visit Tim, Katie, and my mom (Hi, Mom!), and old and new friends, while the brown one has been treated to the company of sweet house sitters far more athletic than the old man. 

So I wonder if the Buddha would negotiate. I’m fine with being born again each morning. Grateful, in fact, even on these gloomy ones. But could we extend the window a bit for what we do mattering? (It’s been a nice couple of weeks.)

Or maybe I should just feed the Buddha’s lines through Hemingway, and close this out with Jake’s response to Brett (who suggested they could have had so much fun together) at the end of The Sun Also Rises. 

“Isn’t it pretty to think so?”  

I get that this title is suspect given the self-indulgent nature of this blog. But I’ve just returned from almost two weeks without a dog-shadow, and thanks to “Aunt Jordan,” her first young housesitter love, Cedar went about her Cedar life, apparently without any hint of longing for the old man. She gave me a good show of wiggling when I came in the door last night, but by my lunchtime swim today, I swear I caught her wistfully wondering where Jordan was. Pretty sure our silent conversation went something like this.

“I know Jordan took you skiing. I’m not super happy that you got to ski before me this year.”

“Can we go?”

“I don’t have classic gear and nothing’s groomed for skate yet.”

“Can we go?”

“It’s super cold out and I have work to catch up on.”

“How ’bout now?”

We did not go. She had a very half-hearted play session with neighbor dog Ace today. Despite the day’s cold beauty, the Fall-behind time change has us both eating–and I hope both packing it in–early.

As I type, Cedar lets out a big sigh, as if to say, “Are you finally learning the lesson I’ve been trying to teach you since I got here? It’s so not about you, Dad.”