sudden_serenity

Every morning I want to write a post about my drive to work, how inspiring it is, how I can watch the seasons come and go. And every afternoon I wonder how many times I can find ways to explain a dawn, a mist, the wildlife I noted. These are quiet moments that mean so much to me, but trying to put that wonder into words that might appeal to someone else is almost impossible. They are personal miracles - uplifting, teaching and grounding. In isolation each element is nice but everyday but taken as an overall experience, they are invaluable to me.

People are beginning to bring in trees for midwinter. I love that the Christian holiday and the the ancient ways are so entwined that no one even thinks about the symbolism of that. In Suffolk there are places where the mistletoe is so thick on the bare trees, they look like perfect spheres. I love to see that.

I've been thinking about native tree species in the UK. I need to look into that more. A friend was bemoaning the sycamore that had self seeded in her garden and that she wanted to remove. Sycamore does not sound like a native word. Out tree names are short - ash, elm, oak, beech, birch - I have read some things about PIE (proto indoEuropean language) that goes into those words - they are as ancient as speech itself. I wonder if words for non native trees have a pattern like this. And then I thought about all the European words for 'tree' and wondered why they are all different. Perhaps tree is a word that is later - used to combine things that we would have named individually rather than lumped together.

The sun rises late and reluctantly these mornings before midwinter. Walking our dog in the dark is not fun but the lights on the trees already up and decorated on people's porches and in their sitting rooms gladden my heart and quicken my steps - as they would have done to anyone walking a dark path, no matter when.