Back on February 27, the Saturday after my 50th birthday, Rachel and a bunch of other friends surprised me with a videopoetry-themed party in the upstairs room of a nearby pub in London. Our friends Marc Neys and Katrijn Clemer came over from Belgium for the weekend, and Marc—AKA Swoon—acted as VJ at the party with a whole program of videopoems by different masters of the art, including two new ones of his own using texts I’d written. One of them adapted the poem “Hit the Lights” from the Conversari series, with a voiceover contributed by Rachel, which significantly changed how I heard the poem. (I didn’t even recognize it as my own at first, which is always a pleasure.) Marc incorporated some great footage of brown bears, a choice which gains in significance as the film proceeds. It was a terrific videopoem all around, I thought:

Watch on Vimeo.

On my birthday itself, we had gone to the old resort town of Southwold on the East Anglian coast, and were blessed with unseasonably warm and mild weather. We stayed in a grand old hotel associated with Adnams brewery, one of my favorite British brewers. I’ve shared some of my still photos from that trip, but I also shot some video footage, including a couple of great, unscripted moments from Rachel, one in our hotel room and one on the beach. The other day I finally thought of a way to use it, tweaking another poem from the Conversari series (mainly adding a couple of lines to make a better fit with the imagery). Here’s the result:

Watch on Vimeo.

Green islands of moss
beckon across a fluttering sea
of brown leaves.

This cloud-filtered sunlight
is perfect, says the photographer
as her cheeks slowly turn red.

In earlier travel posts about the Isle of Arran, I’ve shared photos of Neolithic remains and fairy glens, as well as the petroglyphs at King’s Cave. But that doesn’t begin to exhaust all that we found worth seeing (and photographing) there.

There were, for example, these sea-side trace fossils of an enormous centipede ancestor called arthropleura, which attained lengths of 8 1/2 feet.

Sea-side walks were full of photogenic surprises, such as this view of an oystercatcher with the off-shore volcanic neck known as Ailsa Craig.

The rocky shores themselves were extraordinary. Near where this photo was taken, the geologist James Hutton identified his first unconformity.

On a trip to the Isle of Arran in 1787 he found his first example of an unconformity to the north of Newton Point near Lochranza, but the limited view did not give the information he needed. It occurs where vertically oriented Precambrian Dalradian schists are overlain by more recent cornstones in the Kinnesswood Formation of the Inverclyde Group (Lower Carboniferous) with an obvious difference in dip between the two rock layers, but he incorrectly thought that the strata were conformable at a depth below the exposed outcrop.

At low tide, gleaners failed to disturb the slumber of harbor seals.

Beach boulders were endlessly fascinating.

Some still bore the marks of more ancient seas.

Of the three castles on the island, Lochranza was the only one we took the time to visit. (The money-grubbing custodians of the much larger Brodick Castle wouldn’t even let us walk in their woods for free, so we had no interest in seeing the rest of it.)

I suspect I wouldn’t have liked it nearly as much if it hadn’t been a ruin.

The scaffolding and renovation going on in one section only added to the visual appeal.

We frequently encountered red deer, which are closer in size to elk than to Pennsylvania’s white-tailed deer.

This juvenile European robin let me get quite close.

In general, I let Rachel with her superior lenses take the telephoto and macro shots. I’ll round out the post with a selection of her Arran photos (which number 114 — to say nothing of her photos from previous visits).

Black guillemots nested right in the ferry terminal pier at Brodick.

Shore pipits. It was definitely the season for hungry fledglings.

We went swimming in the ocean. And by “we”, I mean “I”. Even in late July, the Irish Sea is not terribly warm.

A stonechat posed obligingly next to a stone wall.

Of all the butterflies and moths we saw, the Scotch Argus was my favorite.

The highland trail pictured at the beginning of this post was rocky in some parts and boggy in others, but by forcing us to watch our feet, drew our attention both to a lizard

and to a tiger beetle.

Ten days in Arran were barely enough to whet my appetite. I can see why people get so attached to the place.

I hope to return someday.

Here’s Rachel laying her hand on beech trees in Hebden Bridge,

and here she is with a sycamore in the center of Bradford on Avon,

a churchyard yew,

the tithe barn door,

a beech in a Wiltshire woodland,

a stone at Avebury,

another stone at Avebury,

a stone at Machrie Moor,

a sculpture in Meri Wells’ studio in central Wales,

and a big ash tree in the village of Brill.

They say British people are more reserved than us Yanks, but I’m the one who tends to keep my hands to myself — all the while snapping photos like a voyeur. It’s sad, really. I am literally and figuratively out of touch.

With a few notable exceptions.

I have had some company on the morning porch this Christmas season,

and together we have bathed in the long, long sunrises of midwinter.

(Photo by Rachel — click to see larger.)

Woodrot Padcost 47: books read aloud in 2013 [MP3, 25 MB]
Duration: 27:50

‘Tis the season for literary bloggers to write about the best things they read this year. But in my case, much of my most interesting reading is out loud, in nightly Skype calls with Rachel Rawlins. Usually I’m the reader, but sometimes she is able to get an electronic version of whatever it is we’re reading and we take turns. I thought it might be fun to record us talking about what we liked and didn’t like this year (though Rachel had her doubts that anyone else would care). Here are the main books we talked about:

• Sweeney Astray: A Version from the Irish [Buile Suibhne] by Seamus Heaney (Farrar Straus Giroux, 1983)
• Ten Poems About Sheep selected and introduced by Neil Astley (Candlestick Press, 2012)
• Bee Journal by Sean Borodale (Jonathon Cape/Random House, 2012)
• The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy (Pan Macmillan, 2012)
• Seven Viking Romances translated by Herman Pálsson and Paul Edwards (Penguin, 1985)
• Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney translated by Herman Pálsson and Paul Edwards (Penguin, 1978)
• The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki translated by Jesse L. Byock (Penguin, 1998)

Other books mentioned in passing:

• Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths by Nancy Marie Brown (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012)
• The Saga of the Jomsvikings translated by Lee M. Hollander (University of Texas Press, 2011 [1955])
• Sagas of Warrior-Poets (various translators), edited by Diana Whaley (Penguin, 2002)
• Comic Sagas and Tales from Iceland (various translators), edited by Vidar Hreinsson (Penguin, 2013)
• The Saga of the Volsungs translated by Jesse L. Byock (Penguin, 1999)
• Heimskringla: History of the Kings of Norway by Snorri Sturluson, translated by Lee M. Hollander (University of Texas Press, 1964)
• Grettir’s Saga translated by Denton Fox and Herman Pálsson (University of Toronto Press, 1974)
• Grettir’s Saga translated by Jesse Byock with skaldic verses translated by Russell Poole (Oxford University Press, 2009)

For Valentine’s Day, my love designed and knitted me an Atlantic hagfish, A.K.A. slime eel — Myxine glutinosa. Apparently, she was the first on Ravelry to do so. While to the uninitiated this might seem like a less than subtle suggestion that I am a slime-ball and a bottom-feeder, in fact it was a highly romantic gesture, a response to my “Ten Simple Songs” (8-9, if you’re in a hurry). I was initially going to hold off posting that poem until Valentine’s Day, but then I thought, what if she doesn’t like it? Perhaps slime eel references don’t belong in a serious love poem. I guess I needn’t have worried.

Hagfish purposely tie themselves in knots to remove excess mucus. Thankfully, this plush, knitted hagfish is not mucilaginous in the slightest. (See additional photos on the project page at Ravelry.)

I don’t own many works of art, and none that please me quite so much as this. Folks, don’t ever let anyone tell you that poetry doesn’t pay! Also, heed the wise words of Robert Fulghum (often wrongfully attributed to Dr. Seuss):

We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.
Robert Fulghum, True Love

It’s not clear why this tract of old-growth, mixed conifer-hardwood forest was named after the author of “I Have a Rendezvous With Death.” (“There is probably no connection between Alan Seeger and the area named for him, except, perhaps, that they are both poetic,” says the webpage at Bill’s Hikes.) It is especially beautiful in autumn, however, when we all have a rendezvous with death,

and I suppose all its mighty old hemlocks will eventually succumb to the hemlock woolly adelgid, though the Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry seems committed to protecting them with expensive insecticides for now. I think my gloom on this subject rather exacerbated Rachel’s tree-hugging tendencies.

We passed one other couple on the circular trail through the natural area. They asked us, for some reason, if we’d seen any ferocious beasts.

* * *

Okay, I can’t resist sharing one more photo, taken here in Plummer’s Hollow several days ago:

Bon voyage, Rachel!

We hadn’t planned our Adirondacks camping trip to coincide with the peak of fall color — in fact, my hiking buddy Lucy and I hadn’t really thought about it at all, because we see the fall foliage display every year, and we knew that if we didn’t catch it at its peak there, we’d certainly see it here. We just wanted to show Rachel one of our favorite places. (It also didn’t hurt that another blogger friend happened to live less than two hours away.) Hell, we were even foolish enough to think the campgrounds would be virtually deserted, as they had been the last time we’d visited the Adirondacks in October. No such luck.

Instead, we found ourselves hopping from campsite to campsite as spots became open in what had otherwise been a fully booked campground in the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks. (Thank you, rainy weather!) The cold rain might have made hiking and camping less than optimal, but it did nothing to diminish the autumn colors. And our British visitor seemed suitably wowed — that’s her arm in the photo above, gesturing in inarticulate appreciation at the drops of water dangling from the ends of shed white pine needles ornamenting a balsam fir bough. Though I did bring my own camera along, I had a hard time seeing things afresh. There’s just nothing like seeing something for the first time, as Rachel’s Adirondacks photo set attests. Go look, and prepare to be wowed yourself.

The best cup of coffee I’ve ever had remains the one I drank in southern Tanzania after spending one of the least pleasant nights of my life (so far, as Homer Simpson would qualify) at a large warehouse-like structure near the Tazara railway station in Mbozi. After sleepless hours of giant fearless rats, lying over my rucksack to mitigate attention from fearless (if not giant) thieves, accompanied by a naked man with floor-length dreads dancing round a fire reciting verse in a mellifluous voice in at least four different languages (I only recognised the Shakespeare) all night – well, almost any fluid would probably have tasted like the nectar of the gods.