Getting Outdoors

The dogs and I went to this park a week ago on the day of lovely clouds.

Going and coming, it is about a three-mile walk; and one can easily

rack up another mile on the circular paths inside the park.

We are moving toward winterish weather now; we may not see

another day as nice as this one was until springtime.

Wherever one lives, there will be something interesting outdoors and nearby.

Check it out!

A type of book I like and am always looking out for

is the book about the naturalist's author's home ground.

One such book is:

Wintergreen; Rambles in a Ravaged Land

by Robert Michael Pyle.

The home ground here is the Willapa Hills region of Washington State, 

a place of abundant rain that has been ravaged by logging,

but where nature is still fighting back.

Chasing Monarchs was the first of Pyle's books I found.

My recently discovered art form, the Triple Epigraph,

begins this book by one of my favorite naturalist authors.

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface

In thee sweet summer, ere thou be distill'd:

Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place

With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed.

   

     William Shakespeare, Sonnets

The lark, the bird of light, is there

in the bitter short days. Put the lark

then for winter, a sign of hope,

a certainty of summer.

     Richard Jeffries, "Out of Doors in February"

No one winterbook---no book---can find nearly

all that should be said of the West, the Wests.

      Ivan Doig, Winter Brothers

*****

I haven't read the Jeffries, but Winter Brothers is a favorite book and Shakespeare's sonnets are at the top of any poetry lists. So your assignment tonight is to look for three epigraphs for a book of your poems.

(For triple epigraphs, see also this recent post:
http://junehymas.blogspot.com/2016/09/begin-by-beginning.html