no words

{No credit, unfortunately}

{credit here}

{again, no credit}

{this is my favorite. I want to be the girl with the pretty blue umbrella.}

{Credit Here}

{Credit Here}

the problem with poetry

Camping was lovely. I wished on a shooting star at 2:30 in the morning as I laid awake. :) And I saw this terrific piece of graffiti on a huge boulder:

It must have taken someone a long time to carve this into solid rock. That's a lot of luv.

On a completely different note, I'm thinking of submitting some poetry to a contest the library's holding. It isn't really blog-worthy material, except that it's made me think about the problem with liking poetry. My conclusion is this: The problem with liking poetry is that no one else likes it except other poets. Being a poet isn't like being a musician, because no one dislikes all music. But if you tell people you write poetry, they say, "Oh, I hate poetry," not realizing that they've just shaken the foundations of your dreams. Or else they're nice enough, but they don't get it. So you feel kind of dumb because you like the way that what the poet didn't say means just as much as what he did, or the way the words skitter across the page and paint pictures in your mind, and when you say the opening words out loud you really understand how the poem is supposed to feel - and when no one else understands, it feels as though maybe there's something a little dumb about it, after all.

Not that this has ever happened to me. ;)

But anyway, that's my rambling on poetry. And I'm going to submit something! This is a big deal, because I never show anyone what I write. So be excited for me. :)

later days

"Granted, fate and tragedy, aimless and just-missing-by-a-hair are part of human experience, but they are not all, and I'm not sure they are a major part, even in the lives of men who know no Designer or design. For me, I have seen a Keener Force yet, the force of Ultimate Good working through seeming ill. Not that there is rosiness, ever; there is genuine ill, struggle, dark-handed, unreasoning fate, mistakes, 'if-onlys' and all the Hardyisms you can muster. But in them I am beginning to discover a Plan greater than any could imagine. "

-Jim Elliot, 1951

Oh, October!

How I love you! You are beautiful! October is most certainly making up for the letdown of September. The leaves haven't turned yet, but the sky is the perfect smooth blue oval that it only can be in the Fall. The air is crisp, like the apples we picked Saturday.  sixty. five. degrees. Perfection. :)
 I went for a walk today in the woods near our house today, and saw four deer bound away into the trees. Something about Autumn seems to make nature feel so much closer. The sky is a little lower; the trees make themselves conspicuous. I'm going camping tomorrow, because there couldn't be a more ideal time. 

She lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe

"I thought you'd never say hello," she said

"You look like the silent type."

Then she opened up a book of poems

And handed it to me

Written by an Italian poet

From the thirteenth century

And every one of them words rang true

And glowed like a burning coal

Pouring off of every page

Like it was written in my soul from me to you

Tangled up in Blue

So now I'm going back again

I got to get her somehow

All the people we used to know

They're an illusion to me now

Some are mathematicians

Some are carpenter's wives

Don't know how it all got started

I don't know what they're doing with their lives

But me I'm still on the road

Heading for another joint

We always did feel the same

We just saw it from a different point of view

Tangled up in Blue

~Bob Dylan,  Tangled up in Blue

Hopefully I'll have some adventures to relate when I get back from the Great Family Wilderness Excursion :) Until then, happy, happy, happy autumn!