Curriculum Vitae

 

Great good humour, a wonderfully
good nature and relaxed sense of
well-being, inclusive of my presence.
A robust, sometimes wry, always clever
and succinct ability to sum up a situation
and see a problem through to an immediate
and appropriate conclusion. An unfailing
reason and presence of mind, capable
of deep interest and understanding
overwhelming me by the width and
breadth of his boundless curiosity.

A completely open and reasonable
mind, alert to nuances and perspectives.
That incurable curiosity about what
lies beyond his previous experience and
knowledge base, leading him to propel
toward acquiring a well-grounded
understanding to accomplish whatever
tasks he sets for himself, out of sheer
determination and willingness to acquire
the required ease with the tools required.

His character and sense of responsibility
leading so frequently to a considered analysis
a workable conclusion. His engaging empathy
extended toward and beyond the familiar.
His unwillingness to harm even noxious
nuisance things that live and thrive, invade
and irritate. These creatures will be rescued and
retrieved to live another day, why not?

His intemperate joy in life and its
complexities. His keen, sometimes puckish
more often mordant, razor-sharp wit
geared to amuse and yet balance carefully
what lies beyond the sanguine obvious.
His courage in helping me to face any shared
life difficulties. His unflagging regard for the
well-being of intimate others, me primarily!

His encouragement, his reversions
to the enthusiasms of youth, drawing
his adoring partner to repeat the pleasures
of, say, dancing to the music of younger
years, all those too-many-to-count years
ago when we truly were young, the age
our grandchild has now attained, oh my!

And so much more.... The smile that
lingers on his familiar face as he regards
me. The comfort of his touch as flesh
meets its partner. The love and trust
respect and joy that exudes from each
of us. Inexorably, toward the other. Ah
I regret to say, the position is no longer
open; it has been admirably filled. I
commend you for your interest and urge
you to try elsewhere; it will not be regretted.

 

 

The Mountain Storm

 

Finally, the storm that had roiled
and railed throughout night's
passage into the dim light of dawn
begins to wear out its incendiary
bellowing passion. The half-drowned
world below the weeping cauldron of the
sky lifts its sodden head in relief.

Dripping ceaselessly from the night's
assault, the relentless drumming
of the dark sky, as black clouds defied
one the other's domination, like the
clash of ferocious Titans, the world
shook itself and soon the dense
cloak of fog slunk away, leaving a
shimmering veil of mist to accede to
the strengthening sun's imperious
command to summarily depart.

Rivers of rainwater, storm water
the life-blood of that celestial combat
tumbled down mountain slopes
gathering momentum and thundering
and tossing, hauling all unsecured in
their wake, trees and shrubs and
rocks and soil all submitting to the
fury and the majesty of Nature's
imperious anomalous tantrums.

The tumbling mountain streams
icy, swollen beyond their narrow fluted
confines, hurtle through and over, beyond
and between time-and-water-scarred
stony-ridged passages, on the remote
impervious mountain slopes. Boulder-
strewn and tree-stumped, the excited
wide and running, tumbling rivers
thrash over all in their riotous passage.

Great steaming, boiling cauldrons of
water rushing to the great beyond of the
world's vast seas and waterways, stream
and steam, carrying in their irresistible
grip the unresistant detritus of forested
slopes, thundering the atmosphere
flailing all in their path, enjoining Nature's
chaos as she wills it, when she does.

 

 

Old Rattlesnake

 

Was a time we virtually sprinted up
that mountain trail. Mountain? Hey, more
like a carbuncle of a geological feature on
the New Hampshire landscape of granite
mountains, national and state forests and
fresh water lakes in grand natural abundance.
We were once handily capable of matching
our children's casually energetic strides of
youthful exuberance and adventure.

This has become for us, these forays into
the mountain landscape, a fond tradition.
Forty years on, we are now a simple brace
still parents, but of children now older than
we were back then. In place of our children
two elderly little companion dogs, as resolute
as we, eager to expend what energy we can
muster, to match the enthusiasm for
adventuring we cannot and need not contain.

They, like us, youth long behind, but freshness
in vision and aptitude for ongoing trysts with
nature's life-enhancing opportunities, forge on
delirious with the exhilaration of it all, the
fragrance of the woods, the freedom of movement
the evanescent birdsong, the teasing presence
of wildflowers; above all, the challenge.

As we initiate the ascent, the syncopated
rhythm of a pileated woodpecker sharply
drums the air. The series of fierce cloudbursts
that marched through yesterday has left
the trail darkly drenched, gravel crunching
underfoot at the trailhead. Our little dogs
are intrigued by odours released by the
rain and are loathe to be hurried along.

The initial ascent is marginally steep, the
trail far too well-maintained; on the verge of
irritating. The natural slope would be far
more welcome than the current advent of
rock-and-log-conceived "steps". Once the
notional steps are left behind, and a
network of tree roots and packed dirt-and-grit
trail remains, progress improves substantially.

Venerable pines, maples and oak whose
measured girth has been elaborated by
ancient layers of lichen lend an otherworldly
air of primeval fantasy to the landscape. An
oven bird's prolonged, repetitive call punctuates
the forest stillness. Along the trail, acorns litter
the ground; swift, tiny chipmunks make their
stealth forays, fleet as shadows to claim bounty.

Huge boulders appear beside the trail,
well lichened and mossed. Underfoot, smooth
granite outcroppings replace the trail from
time to time. Above the leafy canopy, some
blue sky winks back, interrupted by voluminous
billowing clouds, some so black, they throw
a darkly secretive ambiance on the arras.

Dragonflies, large and dark, flit by, intent
on their incessant hunt. The understory of
hemlock and moose maple, along with fern
and tree seedlings march in green insouciance
upon the lower landscape. And among them
lilies-of-the-valley hugging the bases of
tree trunks; the delicate tiny white bells
already on the fade end of bloom. Solomon's
seal are present, and blueberry shrubs, along
with the flower-white of blackberries.

Obtaining the height, a sprinkling of rain
as dark clouds hesitate despite the incessant
determined wind. The views are modestly
splendid...of the lake below and of the vast
sky, scattered with wide stretches of cloud.
An effort, a reasonable and pleasurable one
has brought us supreme satisfaction and
no little amount of maturity-validation.

 

 

Suddenly...The Earth Moved

 

Suddenly, normalcy violently assaulted.
We, once more, catapulted into an
unfamiliar world of physical dissonance.
Together companionably in our house
when with no warning a monumental
sound and furious motion delivered us
to a place we had scant reckoning with.

That force assembled its resources to
utterly surround us with its long, loud
wall of shrieking sound and tottering
frailty against a trusted reality pantomiming
a deadly opponent. Our stark shock and
slow recognition betrayed complacent ease.

In a world where nature can assume
its threatening persona geared to respond
with cataclysmic force, like a powerful
presence suddenly awakened to a
morose and malicious mood. We’ve
faced these moods before; one might
surmise once exposed to such power and
danger sanguine attitude would be
forever buried in expectation, but no.

Taken by shock and surprise, we cannot
fathom what is occurring until the
fierce tremblor threatens to bring down
walls around us. We exit, and wait, lurk
as the motion and groans of the earth
are translated to the exterior; in the
atmosphere of motion and commotion,
deep creaks subside and stillness reigns.

Left with a foreboding and deep unease
at this brutal demonstration that we are not
and never will be, masters in our own house
we move trembling, awe-struck limbs and
furrowed brows back into our house.
To restore order where chaos so briefly had
charge, and pictures hang on crooked walls.

All the wall paintings, ajar. Fragile items
tipped, overturned, contents languidly
insensate, spilled. Our telecommunications
suddenly out of order, minds slowly reverting
to the ordinary comforts of an ordinary
summer day. The radio soon crackles with
the over-heated excitement of recent panic
stilled, and people begin to recount their
disbelieving reactions to our Earth’s
flirtation with geological intemperance.

 

 

Interludes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This not the benign nature that so
assiduously tends my garden, sweetly
offering gentle rains and abundant sun
kindly soil conditions and minuscule
creatures within to nurture and bring to
brilliant maturity the trees and shrubs so
fruitful that delight our green experience.

That nature that sends us colourful
songbirds to nest in our garden trees
and hosts of insects, butterflies and
small, furry creatures to swell the
natural presence of all her subjects
impressing us with her goodness of
purpose and integrity to her design.

This is another presence entirely, one
we cannot help but be aware of, yet as
remote and rare, not to be thought overmuch
of, a fearful, powerful and utterly destructive
presence, threatening to rescind her gracious
demeanor in favour of her domineering persona
devoid of purpose but to terrify her creatures
with the bleak certainty of her dread presence.

We hear the symptoms of her dreadful wrath
the thunderous groan of the Earth as it convulses,
contracts and shudders under her impervious
imperious direction. We feel the constancy of our
naive belief in our place challenged, as what was
solid and unmoving, writhes in an agony of violent
creep, collapsing and separating and shredding.

We see the darkly menacing vortex of the
hot breath she blows into a funnel cloud
voraciously sucking everything in its path
into chaotic re-distribution, reversing order
what was assembled as a whole reduced to
its pathetic constituent parts, strewn brokenly
on a suddenly-sere landscape of despair.

These fearsome events leave us trembling
and trepidatious. Our clever technologies
laid bare to malfunction and disarray. Torrential
rains wash away landmarks and drown the
puny signatures of humankind's presence
leaving doleful regret and the misery of loss
in their wake. Nature effortlessly removes
and destroys what she has given. We begin
to understand our temporary ownership.

As placid nature, her violent outbursts spent,
reverses the geological and atmospheric
surroundings to reflect the soothing familiar
hope, then the conceit of vanity, then scorn
and entitled empowerment settle back into
place as we assume again the settled ownership
and determined control of our earthly domain.

 

 

Small Treasures

 

There are vestiges of the small treasures
past their prime, already bloomed, the
flower heads dried, foliage yet maturing, still
proud, but devoid of the evanescent bloom.
There are in evidence others with similar
foliage to those whose presence we hunt
but they are unremarkable lilies, their broad
spear-shaped leaves deep green and promising
the flowers wan and unprepossessing.

Mountain sorrel is in bloom, and so too
blackberries, with their sharp, white, starry
flowers. Patches of yellow hawkweed and
buttercups sit alongside the deep forest trail
close to lushly swirling ostrich ferns.
Dogwood begin to form their floral panicles
and a meadow's-worth of bunchberry
their cheery white faces in peer-review
bloom follow our curious presence.

Then here, and there, sometimes shy
sometimes bold, in grand isolation and
group sequestration, behind and beneath
ferns and hemlock branches, pale pink
white and robustly blushing, they display
themselves, the grand dames of the moist
forest floor, those Ladies Slipper orchids
with their ballooned, nodding heads held
proudly above the rich humus of the forest
soil, and the spray of the mountain stream.

 

 

The Mountain Forest

 

The rain barely shifted on the
horizon, mist rises from mountain
slopes, dark clouds hang suspended
determinedly lodged on the mountain
peaks, comfortable there, resistant
to the dim edge of the sun, anxious to
burn away dark vapour dimming the
day's early summer aspirations.

Hemlock, pine, spruce and fir
present in staid stately array, hung
with mosses and lichens that cling
too to the grey, red, black granite
walls of the gorge down which the
mountain stream storms over the
great boulders the mountain slopes
have shed since time lost its memory.

The robust understory of moose
maple, dogwood and ferns march
in orderly procession up the slopes
under the canopy of a growing
presence of beech and yellow birch.

Old, crumbly and opportunity-rich
trunks gently decaying, do double
duty as nursing logs, with spruce
and hemlock seedlings clinging fast
to their humus-rich surfaces. When
the seedlings become mature enough
to fend for themselves, their nurses
become part of the organic whole.

The air is perfumed with the fragrance
of seasonal blooms, wafted by gentle
breezes. The repeated peal of a
Pileated woodpecker rends the air.
Thrushes sing their welcome of
still-impending rain. Yellow Admirals
flit from ground to graceful, looping
heights, disappearing into the witches'
brew of bright-green tangled leafage.