Causmology

Ultraviolet Andromeda
Credit: UV - NASA/Swift/Stefan Immler (GSFC) and Erin Grand (UMCP)
Optical - Bill Schoening, Vanessa Harvey/REU program/NOAO/AURA/NSF


There was nothing, a vastness of emptiness,
a void incomprehensible in its dreadful silence
its inconceivable non-existence. That much is
clear. Or not. What is a hypothesis but a leap
of faith in a mind's genius in provocatively
imagining that which might - or might not - be?

Nature holds her secret formulaic rituals close.
Why should she divulge her elaborate architecture
of the scaffolds of existence? The creative impulse
is hers, hers to conceive and to execute as she
wills, when she deems fit. Away, you compulsively
seeking minds! This much she will tantalize you
with: radiation, gravity, gaseous emissions, organic
elements, order and disarray, temperature,
atmosphere, distance, time and space.

Surely with the considerable aid of these primary
constants, your precocious minds can construct
the origins of the Universe! Try a little harder, do...

Think: There was a beginning. It was dark, cold,
immeasurably vast - and there was no thing
visibly present. Therefore, there was nothing. Or
was there? Ah, from nothing something resulted.
Something unspeakably profound, majestic
immense and powerful. Was that not so?

The birth of awesome energy, density, as
matter rushed to fill the cold, vast emptiness.
Imagine, if you will, the brilliant, all-absorbing
awe-full richness of light, clashing and
tempestuously crashing, slashing the darkness
with the ineffable life of a universe born into
existence. Call it what you will, nature simply
shrugs and proceeds with her blueprint of creation.

She is busy with galaxies, nebulae, stars, planets,
super novae, collapsars, icy comets. Red dwarfs
black holes in her comprehensive engagements in
which she takes such pride of ownership. Taking
pleasure at her leisure in unleashing solar winds
fiery eruptions on the liquid seas of volatile gases
amusing herself for fourteen billion years. Meaningless
as a measure of her timeless sovereign presence.

Sufficiently bored, on occasion she will set aside
her amusements, suffer all matter, energy and time
to be beckoned and collected into those black
receiving agents of anti-matter, to be stifled and
become no more. Until eventually, the housekeeping
is done. Nothing more exists and the black holes
collide, re-imagine themselves into the vast stillness
of nothing. Goodbye. And hello! Yet Again.

Winter Fog

 

Clouds of water vapour hang
like shimmering grey fabric
over the masts of the forest.
Late-January rain, above-freezing
temperatures have swelled the
atmosphere with fog, melting
the landscape's hills of snow.

Trees stand slickly black, but
for the newly-gashed snags.
Water droplets hang like a
multitude of festive glass ornaments
from the sharp needles of Hawthorns
and knobby twigs of wild apple trees.

The ravine's creek runs wide and
wild, particulate-laden and mud-brown
musically rippling over detritus dams
and under bridge trestles. The sharp,
dank odour of swamp gas rises into the
atmosphere driven by the roiling,
rampant release of snow-melt.

Mist rises from the ground like
ghostly reminders of forests past.
A great barred owl hunkers solemnly
on a limb halfway up a towering
poplar, shakes its sodden feathers
then settles again into his fierce,
hunter's gaze. Voles, mice and

chipmunks, be aware ... be fearful
and live to celebrate another season.
Still, a bold nuthatch presumes to announce
its chirpy presence, brightly nattering
timidity not its style, even in the
near proximity of a dreaded raptor.

On the far western horizon
a break in the solid metallic sky,
as the setting sun casts its swift
departure sending radiance to
blaze the sodden world below.

 

Canadian Adventure, British Columbia-Style

 

While I was rolling the sleeping bags, I saw two people cresting the mountain. The breathless young woman mentioned last night’s storm. I said the storm was exciting, but at 58, I’d found the climb exhausting. She laughed, said she was 37 and hadn’t thought she would make it, said she couldn’t imagine her mother even attempting the climb.

We’d left Vancouver for the three-hour drive to Long Peak. Travelling the narrow coastal highway I felt nervous seeing signs warning of falling rocks from the steel-netted cliff face.

On the winding, narrow logging road I worried about squeezing past hell-bent logging trucks. When we finally parked the car dusk was falling in the shadow of the mountain. We camped on the shale beach beside the lake, cooked dinner, admired the clear night sky, and went to bed.

Early next morning we began the drive to the trailhead. The car struggled up the steep rock-strewn road and we soon realized we weren’t about to get much closer. We shouldered our backpacks and began the hike to the forest. Either side of the road grew pearl everlasting and other floral offerings in abundance, and we continually heard the sharp squeaks of pica darting for cover.

At the trailhead the pitch was considerably intensified as we climbed the steep path. At times the scree was so loose, the path so narrow I experienced vertigo observing the valley below. Our son, a biologist, was in his element; my husband was in no distress. Their backpacks were far weightier than mine, but my legs were turning to stone, and my lungs felt like bursting.

Our son had been there before and said we’d soon be reaching the Gates of Shangri-La, a widespread rockfall over which we clambered. The rocks were huge, the area wide, and it took quite a bit of effort to find our way through it. The views, too, were spectacular, looking across from where we slowly wound our way through rocks each as large as a car, a small shed.

Another milestone; a mountain hut and around it, a vertical green meadow dissected by a narrow trail. We peered into the hut and stepped inside. A big old stove, a long table, some chairs, and upstairs a sleeping loft. There was a visitor's book, signed by people who obviously slept over, intent on a longer hike than ours, presumably. A number of the messages noted the appearance of packrats, swifting away with anything not nailed down. Not far from the hut stood a reliable and stout out-house, of which several of our party made use.

“Not long now, Mom!” shouted our son encouragingly. As I struggled up and upward following a well-worn, but quite narrow pathway up the green meadow. Finally, it appeared that he was right; we were approaching what appeared to be another landscape entirely.

A marmot greeted us as we forded a stream shooting over the mountain from a blue-green glacial lake. Above the lake, after our 8-hour climb, we pitched our tent. On a bit of a shelf in the rock. A 'bit of a shelf' is the operative word here. The floor of the tent slanted downward slightly, toward to the lake. At the far end of the lake was the dominating presence of the glacier that fed it, roaring as it melted, for this was late August.

On day-trips ascending from our camp we discovered other, smaller glacial lakes and glaciers, some blooming with red algae. We crossed other rockfalls and accessed crests where we ate lunch and gazed over unending peaks across the Stein Valley.

On one of these excursions clear skies turned suddenly dark; a thunderhead began its journey toward us. We scrambled to descend. Thunder, lightening, great gusts of wind, sleet and rain pummelled our little tent, with us huddling inside, as the temperature plummeted, but it stood fast.

When the storm finally subsided, we began to think about something approximating an evening meal. Everything around us was completely drenched. And it was, by then, quite dark. Suddenly, we saw what looked like a flare across the valley, on another mountain top, opposite to where we sat. And as the flare grew, and we understood it to be someone's camp fire, we set up a loud cheer. Obviously heard on the other side, since we heard a faint response of a cheer from them.

(Made me wonder if in their distant proximity, I was as private as I thought myself to be, squatting over a fissure in the rockface, half-hidden behind a knobbly shrub.)

We slept soundly that night, though waking occasionally. I kept thinking we were going to roll off the side of the mountain. In fact, I shifted myself sometimes, with the feeling that the slant was compelling me in a direction I had no wish to go in. And when we awoke, it was to the rushing sound of the melting glacier, at the end of that fabulous blue-green lake below us.

The clear skies of the day before, that had made yesterday such an adventure, had given way, when we awoke, to a completely overcast, bruised sky, threatening to dump once again. We made another morning excursion after a good hefty breakfast of pancakes and tea, and mandarine oranges, scrambling over the rockface to find yet another rosy-crusted glacier. Returning to our camp site, with the threat of rain undiminished, we decided to break camp and descend.

As we descended the valley I felt good and brave and happy post-adventure, yet anxious anticipating the car-sized rocks at Shangri-La, the steep, narrow defile through the forest. The extent of my surprise (and deflation) cannot possibly be imagined as, halfway through Shangri-la we passed a young man with a paniered Labrador, then a family with two young children making their way up the mountain, happy in their enterprise.

How Canadian can you get?

Nature's Precincts

It is an ethereal, glowing world unseen

by all who fail to venture into the natural

confines of a forest in fall. A world of

transformative seasonal verities where

verdant normalcy metamorphosizes and

becomes an enchanted colour kaleidoscope

of eye-dazzling rainbow shades festooning

woodland trees and shrubbery, a glittering

golden landscape of breathtaking beauty.

Where seasonal rains lacquer the autumnal

scene and the winds of fall send urgent 

messages to foliage to vacate their summer

perches to decorate the forest floor. The

diminishing forest canopy warmed by a noon

sun that sends fingers of light to linger on

pastels and vibrantly brush-stroked leaves

reflect the authenticity of nature's precincts.

The Winter Forest

 

The winter forest is an enchanted
glistening landscape of
chilled silence, muffled and
deeply peaceful. Contoured in
its serene season of rest.

A gust creates an ectoplasmic
drift slowly unburdening
a laden spruce bough.
A lone crow leisurely crests
over steep forest spires.

Tiny chickadees flit
among the trees,
a companion nuthatch
minding their order.

The sky's blue canopy
ribboned by evanescently
diffused clouds as lightly
transparent as the snow
below is opaque, fully
blanketing the frozen earth.

Today's languid wind chill
far less urgent, small wildlife
come suddenly awake to a
day of sun and glorious prospects.

Mice and voles burrow deep
under the warm weight of
their enveloping comforter.
Late-season wildflowers
nod their winter-dried heads.

The forest stream lies hushed
and frozen, glinting back
the sun's crystalline shine,
banked with snow drifts.

 

 

Approaching the Ineffable

The origins of the universal creative force

that is nature will remain forever unknown

for the originator of all that is in its wholesale

complexity shuns intimacy with the curious

the very mind and intelligence that nature

itself is responsible for as but one speck in the

vast universe still unfolding beyond the reach

of mere human understanding. Nature holds its

blueprints of being and origination in the vault 

of the universe unreachable by the questing 

mind endowed with the hypotheses of vision

and imagination destined to forever flaunt its

brilliance through the sublime intricacy of its 

outreach leaving us gasping with incredulity

spurred to ever greater invention destined to fail.

Nature's Subtle Messenger

A truly magnificent creature he is

so tiny -- but not insignificant

readily overlooked in the landscape

though his message is significant

to those who mourn the passing

of summer warmth despite nature's

compensating autumnal colours

meant to divert thoughts of winter cold 

in admiration and awe of the colour palette  

unleashed by one season departing 

the next's arrival in the interlude before 

winter's icy presence. The woolly bear

caterpillar informing of a mild season

to come, a tolerable winter after all

the message his broad orange stripe

conveys as he trudges slowly to his own

winter hibernation to emerge a moth.

Seasonal Wildfires

 

 

Seasonal Wildfires

They arrive in over-heated combustion
when circumstances are just so; tinder-dry
forests, scarcity of rainfall, vigorous
hot winds and malevolence also plays
a role when aspiring pyromaniacs
lust to view the thrill of devouring flames
consume all in their way, from inanimate
to animate, animals madly dashing to
hoped-for-safety and forests withering
from life to scorched death. Towns and
villages, urban and suburban homes and
civic buildings erupt in flames even as
firefighters risk their lives in a comradeship
of death-defying covenants, placing them
within the belly of the beast to outwit
and out-manoeuvre the fire's tempestuous
madness in its all-consuming hunger to
destroy all it can humble and level and
blacken, finding its home beneath the
devastation to simmer deep within the
earth, to rest awhile awaiting other such
grand opportunities to ungratefully lay
waste to all its mistress, nature, has devised. 
But wildfires too are nature's elements of
dominion and control. She entertains herself
with fall rehearsals in the heavens above
harmlessly displaying her awesome theatricals
like an expert fire-monger teaching her servants 
immaculate procedures for maximum effect.

 

 

Tranquil and Still

Tranquil and Still

The fiery orb of the sun
burns its passage across
an ocean-blue sky, its
warmth concealed by the
ice-fire of a winter day,
wind whirling and whipping
feathery snow into every crevice.

Bright spears of sunlight
pierce the crowns of deciduous
trees, their limbs black and bare
against a landscape heavily
sifted with snow, stumps in
ghostly shapes haunting the
atmosphere, tranquil and still.

The snow, powdery-light, sits
fully on conifers transformed
into delicate white pagodas,
translucent in the blinding
light.  That transcendental
light of the sun paints a 
glow over the  canopy of
the forest, capturing magic.

 

Comfortless Power

 

Comfortless Power

The forest has been embraced

in a thick white comforter

of snow, a sight to behold, soon

followed by raging bellows of

blasting wind hurtling daggers

of ice-pelleted curtains across

the suddenly transformed landscape

from gentle beauty to raging 

fury. In the city traffic is

stock-still in the shock of

immobility, the roads a thick,

slick menace of ice. City residents

huddle in misery by candlelight

as their homes become unheated

caverns of despair. Frantic civic

efforts to defray winter's sullenly

morose excess pits frail human

ingenuity against pitiless nature,

casually reintroducing her creatures

to the reality of imperial puissance.

 

 

Frosted Winter Landscape

Atmospheric conditions have

beaten the sky to a silver-white

froth of clouds that vigorous

winds prepare to upend

spilling the white in a cascade

of snow flurries over the waiting

landscape, leaving the silver intact. 

The forest's creek welcomes a

fresh plush coverlet over the

thick blanket already covering

its icy surface in the frigid air of

a winter afternoon. Birdsong there

is none, nor frantic scrabbling of

furred forest creatures all huddled

in their lairs on this frosted day.

The series of bridges thoughtfully

fording the creek in its switchbacks

stand as testament to the fate of

the forest trees, hunched with the

burden of a winter's snowpack

the forest canopy a lacework of 

white-ladled branches, the forest

floor an undulation of white.

 

 

Winter's Icy Wind

 

Above, a wide, deep wash of blue.
Not a wisp of cloud to mar this
day's stunning perfection. This
was today's message to us.
Frigid temperatures reign
thanks to the absence of cloud
trapping scant winter heat below.

We are lashed by the icy fingers
of winds in high dudgeon,
knocking the heads of the
forest trees and slicing its fire
across our revealed flesh; eyes
weeping, foreheads frozen.

Dried flower stalks bow in
humble homage to the
insistent, imperious wind.
Gossamer veils of snow
languorously part from
laden spruce boughs.

Oblivious, in their winter
element, the minuscule, dainty
black, grey and white shapes
of chickadees flit from branch
to branch, calling their delight
with their environment.

The creek running through
our Ontario wooded ravine in
this Ottawa Valley is frozen fast,
its glaring surface reflecting
the sun's serendipitous presence
as we lope along snow-padded trails.

We have company this day;
silent, elongated, gracefully
following, then leading us forward.
Our shadows step lively, unaffected
by the chill, the ferocity of wind.
Brought to life by the sun's
life-affirming presence.

 

 

Snow Intaglio

 

The forest floor, well on its way
to freezing - encouraged, bullied
by impending winter's
dominion over land
and inland waterways...

Those ferocious icy blasts
have brought new, permanent
snow, covering that rigid floor.
Snow flurries pause lazily in
downward spiral toward
winter's certain depths.

Wind whips bare branches.
The scarlet head of a woodpecker
brutalizing the trunk
of an ancient pine, shards flying
reveals a wide, white gap;
the bird rewarded for its
destructive industry.

Clouds catapult their spare
contents with diminishing returns
as an insistent gust sweeps them
imperiously aside to reveal
an azure promise.

Beams of modest brilliance
modified by the season
yet still sufficiently solared
illuminate a child's
luminous snow-angel.

 

 

The Winter Forest

 

The winter forest is an enchanted
glistening landscape of
chilled silence, muffled and
deeply peaceful. Contoured in
its serene season of rest.

A gust creates an ectoplasmic
drift slowly unburdening
a laden spruce bough.
A lone crow leisurely crests
over steep forest spires.

Tiny chickadees flit
among the trees,
a companion nuthatch
minding their order.

The sky's blue canopy
ribboned by evanescently
diffused clouds as lightly
transparent as the snow
below is opaque, fully
blanketing the frozen earth.

Today's languid wind chill
far less urgent, small wildlife
come suddenly awake to a
day of sun and glorious prospects.

Mice and voles burrow deep
under the warm weight of
their enveloping comforter.
Late-season wildflowers
nod their winter-dried heads.

The forest stream lies hushed
and frozen, glinting back
the sun's crystalline shine,
banked with snow drifts.

 

 

The Crystalized Wood

The Sky has rained frozen tears
for days, mourning the passage
of yet another year, bringing
us closer to old agedness.
How peculiar its empathy, for
we feel no such sorrow.

As we move through the woods
they too weep, but their grief
expresses their loss of twigs,
branches, limbs brought to
the snow-cushioned ground
with weight of snow and ice.

Tree trunks are glassed with ice
swaddling. The day mild enough
so droplets of melt move under
the ice sheathing like dark bugs
crawling down the trunk.

Finger-thick ice has brought
green boughs to utter decline
littering the forest floor. Above,
silently cruises the dark form
of a lonely crow. No wind, but
damp air and vanishing ice fog.

The sky, a bright pewter awning
has relented, halted its freezing
assault, and presents slivers of blue,
and there, the struggling sun. The
weeks-long frozen creek has
won its reprieve, free, burbling.  

Autumnal Equinox

This day has brought turbulence

to the atmosphere of the forest, its

creek streaming wildly through

the ravine turbid and swollen with

woody debris washed from the

forest canopy in a furious sweep

of wild wind screaming through

tree masts bent in a macabre

dance bringing death to some

split from trunks, victims of a

changing season. Of sturm und drang

there is ample for nature adores a

tone poem in her honour and she has

ordered her elements to scrub and

burnish the landscape for the

occasion. Torrents of rain artfully

varnish the glowing green landscape

as it stands bowed but beautiful, an

ethereal luminosity radiating within.

 

 

Trees as Survivors

 

Rebellion is not necessarily the sole 

prerogative of humanity though the search 

for an ideal well may be. All things being equal 

in nature each species is conspicuous by its

form and features typifying its kind and 

recognized as such. Yet there exists among each 

of its kind variations with some so askew to 

the original blueprint their presence taken for

an instance of a living thing choosing through

personal agency a form unrecognizable in its 

lack of symmetry. Giants of the forest are in 

this category; a misshapen form rejected for 

utilitarian use where straight and tall is the ideal

bypassing the anarchic symbolism of rebellion 

to form, ultimately resulting in a perfectly venerable 

specimen of breath-taking girth and height its guise

of majesty and longevity a triumph of nature.

Forest Drama

 

Mere moments earlier the afternoon sun

had beamed its light shafts through the

forest canopy and blue appeared between

the windswept cathedral of forest giants

when suddenly unsuspected forces altered

the stage as the heavens innocent of clouds

became hostage to an oncoming black swelling

presence presaging a series of violent thunder

storms bellowing in the distance and swiftly

closing the gap. Soon curtains of rain began to

swell the forest stream and in its meadow 

wildflowers so recently preening in the grace 

of the sun were battered by the force of the

unsympathetic rain in an atmosphere suddenly

dark with the drama of thunder and lightning.

My Muse

Robins were conceitedly singing this morning

and I was certain I heard May knock at

April's door. In the garden the slightest

of breezes wafted the fragrance of warm

earth as my spade dug into the moist friable

soil. Tulips were blooming and grape

hyacinths and scilla too. The clematis vines

and climbing roses are filling out. The sun

spring rain and warming temperatures

have coaxed the winter-weary garden to

spread the news: time for all perennials to

surface and they are.  Yesterday's rain

has produced miracles of new growth and

today's vibrant sun that warms my back

has promised a spectacular summer of 

luxuriant plant growth. I am planting 

Dahlias in the moistly receptive garden

soil, Asiatic and toad lilies and gladiolas

envisioning my pleasure when they grow

and bloom. My little dogs nuzzle me as I

dig to just the right depth; they are puzzled

to see me doing what they often do. This is 

a perfect spring day, summer not far behind.

But wait: there was no sun today, it has been

heavily overcast, humidity hanging heavily

in the air; I merely embellished an otherwise

perfect day thanks to the imp that's my muse.

The Wakening Forest

The roof of the sky this day is dark

and brooding saturating the

atmosphere with a humid warmth

like a restrained dip in a 

southern ocean on an idyllic tropical

island. There where exotic

flora has its own customized

rainforest and brilliant greens

throb and vibrate with life in all

seasons. Here in a northern continent

spring forests are exhausted from

their struggle for survival

assailed by ferocious icy winds and

vicious snowstorms as they slowly

recover from a lifeless hiatus

amidst nature's blandishments of

sunlight, caressing breezes and soft 

rains nursing the forest and its soil-

submerged vegetation bit by bit

restored to life, awaiting summer.