These woods....

The other morning we had a very frosty one. 

The sun came out a bit and showed off the workings of cold and nature...

Look how sporty Jed looks!!

Ready for some duck hunting bud?

Another perspective on wabi sabi...the beauty of the decaying...acceptance of the imperfect...

I have a never ending fascination with moss...thick, thin, feathered, velvety, fluffy, trailing...

Remnants of the old farm that used to be here many years ago...

And then there are These Woods.

Growing up in Victoria I had a love for Garry Oaks.

There ecosystem is restricted to a small area on the Southeast part of our Island.

Nowhere else in the world do these gnarly, craggy ones grow...

The very bones of them in the winter, the loving dappled shade in the summer.

But for eighteen years when I lived in Sooke I had a relationship with the coniferous

evergreen forests that surrounded our house.

The deep, tall woods of the west coast are a spiritual place for me.

A free and open place of worship where quite often I was alone with my thoughts and prayers.

So now I think among these different beings...some tall, some short and scrubby. 

But a place like this is my tall drink of water in this sad and beautiful world.

I can sit and wonder and grow along with the moss and the lichen.

Invent my own stories of the things I find.

Like this simple wooden cross I found lying at the base of a big oak.

I wondered...what lies beneath?

So I propped it up against the great tree, stood up some of it's meaning again...

So I will wander these wiry meadows now.

They are new kin to get to know.

I find comfort when I drive up our road, past the subdivision, entering our block

 where the oaks still line the sidewalk-less street. 

Some parts around here were left to be.

For that I am grateful.