Author Topic: Nature journal  (Read 19503 times)

moremojo

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Re: Nature journal
« Reply #50 on: October 31, 2006, 11:04:22 am »
DId they have any festivals in the fall, Scott?
Yes, the Harvest Festival was usually celebrated in early October, and consisted of four days of song, prayer, dance, games, and feasting.

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Nature journal
« Reply #51 on: November 09, 2006, 09:26:22 pm »
I don't know exactly where to put this, but I wanted to write down some information about the wildflower Columbine, because it is mentioned in a crucial part of the story, when Ennis punches Jack on their last day on the mountain. Here are some salient points about this beautiful flower, which is also the state flower of Colorado, my home state.

The columbine is called the flower of cuckoldry as well as the patron flower of the holy spirit, which is represented as a dove. Its botanical name is Aquilegia, which comes from the Latin Aquila, "eagle" because its spurs are like eagle's talons, or it could have come from auilegus, which means water carrier or water container. Greek jars for holding liquids were often pointed at the  base and buried in the ground to keep the contents cool. Spurs, like all horns, also symbolized cuckoldry.

In old paintings and tapestries, the columbine symbolizes the dove of peace or the Holy Spirit, and some think the Holy Spirit is the missing feminine portion of the deity. In medeival times, it was thought that lions loved to eat the columbine.
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Offline Andrew

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Re: Nature journal
« Reply #52 on: November 09, 2006, 10:26:20 pm »
in one of the earlier discussions of columbines Amanda wondered if the English name was connected to the French colombe, and I replied,

Yes, columbine means little dove.  From the shape of the petals, probably - the long tails are something like the long neck of a dove, the wider part like the body.


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Re: Nature journal
« Reply #53 on: November 10, 2006, 02:15:36 pm »
Thank you for the lovely columbine photo, Andrew. The native columbine, which is the state flower of Colorado, is a beautiful blue color, (Boneless blue) the same shade as Jack's eyes.

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Offline Andrew

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Re: Nature journal
« Reply #54 on: November 26, 2006, 09:39:38 pm »
I went out this morning with my splendid Swarovski binoculars and my much less splendid Canon camera, in the hopes of getting a picture of either the wood duck I saw yesterday at dusk, or the snowy white albino squirrel of Friday. 

Nature was playing her favorite game of all time with me - closing her right hand and putting it behind her back, bringing her left from behind her back and opening it.  Neither the squirrel nor the wood duck were where they had been, or at any of the spots they might have been expected.  But I walked into a mad party of singing, feeding, darting birds in bright sunlight at the end of one of the ponds. 

The star of the lot was a brown creeper - an incredibly inconspicuous bird I have been lucky enough to see only three times before in my life.  They walk up tree trunks, their intricately patterned backs camouflaging them perfectly from a distance but their bellies shining white if you can see the bird from the side.  They are so skittish, they are seldom on a single tree for more than a few seconds.  I have still never seen one for longer than the instant it takes to identify it, then it flees because it thinks identification is tantamount to capture.  Today I was so lucky as to be able to see the creeper once in the morning and once about an hour later, on another trunk part way around the pond.  This painting suggests some of the pattern on the back, but nothing of the dazzling white of the underside in bright light.


The creeper must have appeared because it felt invisible in the crowd.  There were goldfinches, the brilliant yellow of summer turned a subtle living buff, slate-colored juncos just showing up in bands for the cooler weather carrying on with high-pitched sputtering, an infinitesimal but perfectly shaped golden-crowned kinglet, a downy woodpecker, a mockingbird, restless mobs of robins roaming around looking for easy plunder, blue jays, white-throated sparrows with their sweetly resonant single warning note, a song sparrow that was too busy feeding to sing, chickadees pecking at the open hollow ends of broken weed stems, a warmly red-brown Carolina wren around a fallen log, titmice with big black eyes and tiny bills.

Something about the carpet in the air all these little birds were weaving with their constrasting songs and their darting flights, made me think of the Sufi poets.




There was a moment of hyperreality as I stood perfectly still among these excited specks of life, surrounded by a storm whipped up by not by wind but by crystal morning sun falling silently out of a still vast blue autumn sky. 


injest

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Re: Nature journal
« Reply #55 on: November 26, 2006, 10:17:02 pm »
well I don't have a story...but here are some pictures trying to convey the colors of the season here in Texas...




injest

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Re: Nature journal
« Reply #56 on: November 26, 2006, 11:13:37 pm »









Offline Andrew

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Re: Nature journal
« Reply #57 on: November 26, 2006, 11:17:44 pm »
Thank you Jess for putting these pcitures here, We've got the real Americal here!  Thank goodness there are still places in your state that look like they did a hundred years ago.

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Re: Nature journal
« Reply #58 on: November 27, 2006, 05:36:38 pm »
Here's a photo of the official Colorado columbine growing by my hot tub:

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injest

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Re: Nature journal
« Reply #59 on: November 28, 2006, 08:13:21 pm »
ok I thought this might be interesting:

the river in summer (east)



the river in fall (east)



the river in summer (west)



the river in fall (west)