A Busy Day at the Feeder Station

I had things to do today, and it was pretty windy out, so I stuck close to home. I did aim the camera out the kitchen window at my bird feeder station from time to time, though; it was pretty active and well worth some attention.

A pair of Mallards visits my back yard every Spring; the hen was there today

A Mourning Dove was cleaning up some of the spillage the Sparrows and Starlings leave behind

And here are the House Sparrows making the mess

The resident Chipmunk also likes the mess the Sparrows leave

The Cardinals all prefer the Sunflower seeds in the flat feeder

A rare visitor, a Brown-headed Cowbird stops by to sample the leavings

© 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Beltane 2020

Today is Beltane (aka May Day), the gateway to Summer. Fertility is the central theme of this sabbat, for humans, plants, and animals. May is when farmers begin to plant their fields, and the season for their children to pair up; it's said that May Day romances make June weddings. I went on a Beltane walk in the Dykeman Spring Nature Park this morning. Everything is greening up and blooming, and bird song filled the air - Cardinals, Robins, Yellow Warblers, Red-winged Blackbirds, Catbirds, and both House and Carolina Wrens were the dominant voices, but I heard a couple of Orioles and some Red-bellied Woodpeckers as well, and saw a few Goldfinches. And the turtles have emerged! I saw about three Painted Turtles (and got a nice close-up shoot with one of them) and a couple of big ol' Snapping Turtles in the bog pool next to the north duck pond. Mama Gaia was celebrating Beltane with a lot of panache today! 

Gray Catbird

Lilacs by the north duck pond

The Painted Turtles have emerged from hibernation

Mama Redwing was busy building a nest...

... and Papa Redwing stood by to supervise.

An Eastern Kingbird sat quietly in the Kentucky Coffee Tree and allowed me to take his portrait.

And I have some Beltane/May Day music for you as well. Loreena McKennitt's "Huron Beltane Fire Dance" is a welcome addition to any Beltane celebration. This video is from her 2006 concert at the Alhambra, and that's Hugh Marsh on the frenzied violin!

One of my favorite songs for Beltane/May day is "Hal-an-tow", a tune from Cornwall sung to welcome the first day of May and the start of Summer, as well as a farewell to Winter. This is my favorite version, sung by the Glasgow Madrigirls.

Have a blessed Beltane and a happy May Day!

Photos © 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

Earth Day 2020

Do you want to improve the world?
I don't think it can be done. The world is sacred.
It can't be improved.
If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it.

— Tao te Ching # 29, Stephen Mitchell translation 

Photos © 2008 - 2020 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Christmas 2019

Photos © 2009 & 2018 by A. Roy Hilbinger 

Winter Solstice 2019

The Dykeman Spring wetland at the Solstice

O Winter! ruler of the inverted year, . . .

I crown thee king of intimate delights,

Fireside enjoyments, home-born happiness,

And all the comforts that the lowly roof

Of undisturb'd Retirement, and the hours

Of long uninterrupted evening, know.

– William Cowper

A joyous Winter Solstice greeting to all my friends and family throughout the world! May you enjoy whatever Winter holiday you celebrate surrounded by warmth and light and love.

© 2019 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Samhain 2019

Today is Samhain! The modern celebration of Halloween gets most of its traditions from the old Celtic New Year celebration of Samhain (pronounced SAH-win), including costumes, Jack O'Lanterns, trick or treating, and the like. The original holiday was all about honoring those passed on, celebrating the ancestors. There were other celebrations with the theme of honoring the dead (the Roman Feralia being one of them) at this time of year throughout Europe, so in the seventh century Pope Boniface IV declared a two-day festival honoring the dead to replace the pre-Christian celebrations - All Saints Day on November 1 and All Souls Day on the 2nd. In England All Saints was known as All Hallows, and the celebrations starting on the night before became known as All Hallows Eve, which through the years became Halloween. The pre-Christian traditions survived the transition and we still follow them today. 

Some of those traditions include wandering the streets to beg for soul cakes, special little cakes baked for this holiday; this tradition was called souling and eventually became the modern day trick or treating. Our ancestors would also carve out turnips and place a candle within, making "turnip lanterns" to light the way for those souls coming to visit at this time when the veil between this life and the afterlife was believed to be at its thinnest; when pumpkins were discovered here in the Americas they were deemed to make much better lanterns than turnips! And of course those who wandered the streets a-souling wore costumes, supposedly to scare away the evil spirits who would also take advantage of the thinner veil between the worlds, although I suspect the costumes may go even further back into time and were originally meant to represent the spirit totems of this time of year - Raven, the Horned God Cerunnos, Owl, and other spirits of the dark half of the year. Nowadays those costumes are more likely to be humorous and light-hearted rather than serious.

Anyone who has been following this blog for a time will know that I always include music in my Samhain posts. There's quite a bit of music over the years that I've used to represent this time of year, both for Samhain and the modern Halloween, and last year I put together a playlist on YouTube to collect my favorites in one place, which you can visit here - these include the 1980s PBS animation of Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre, Loreena McKennitt's All Souls Night, one of my favorite versions of the A-Souling song by New Zealand ensemble Lothlorien, some old British folksongs dealing with some of the more unpleasant characters who might be wandering about, and some assorted modern tunes associated with Halloween these days. Definitely give it a visit.

This year I'm also posting a slideshow here that I put together of my best gravestone photos, set to a breathtakingly beautiful musical setting by Natalie Merchant of British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem Spring and Fall: to a young child, written for a young girl facing mortality for the first time. This piece, more than anything else I've posted here, exemplifies the spirit of Samhain - honoring the departed, and placing death in its necessary place in the cycle of life. Have a blessed Samhain!

© 2019 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Walking On the Path

Ritualized, patterned walking is probably as old as the human race; walking a prescribed path, sometimes with pauses for specific sites or actions, until one reaches the intended goal - a sacred site, a spring, a grove of trees, the center of the labyrinth. They can be large, as in the world's celebrated pilgrimages - the walk to Canterbury, the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, the Via Santiago across northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela. They can also be smaller, such as the stations of the Cross in a Catholic cathedral, or a labyrinth. In fact, those beautiful labyrinths in the cathedrals of Europe are said to be mini substitutes for the grand pilgrimages. Whether large or small, they are a way to focus the thoughts, to slow the pace, to enable meditation. At the end of these walks one always feels the command from God to Moses on Mount Sinai: "Take off your shoes, you stand on holy ground!"

I've been practicing patterned walking for years now. In Newport it was my habit to walk the trails in Ballard Park, stopping at various overlooks, grand old trees, and boulders, and ending up at the Aspen grove on the floor of the quarry. Here in Shippensburg that walk has been replaced with my walks in the Dykeman Spring Nature Park, walking the trails through the woods and the wetland, and ending up on my favorite bench under the Kentucky Coffee Tree by the north duck pond, where I watch the ducks and contemplate the reflection of the trees and the sky on the surface of the water.

I walked that labyrinth today, a gentle walk ending at the bench and then walking back out the way I came in. Come along with me!

© 2019 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Nature, with Appropriate Music

As anyone who has been following this blog for any length of time knows, Nature, both here on Earth and out into Universe, is my spiritual source, my "religion" if you will. But this religion has no gods or goddesses to worship and obey; I don't need a transcendent entity to feel wonder and awe at my surroundings. Nor do I need such to tell me the difference between good and evil, or to threaten me with punishment if I do evil; I believe that this is natural to human nature, that we know by instinct what is good and what is hurtful, and that we only do the hurtful out of personal, knowledgeable choice, or out of fear and pain.

The "prophets" of this "religion" are my heroes - Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, Rachel Carson, Carl Sagan, Annie Dillard, Stephen Hawking, and others like them. And the "scriptures" of my "religion" are the writings of these people and others like them. The Universe is full of wonder, and these people reflect that wonder as well, whether through poetry or through science, and describe it better than I can, providing further inspiration to the panoply of ongoing creation around us. My photography also reflects this wonder in me at what I see and experience.

Recently I discovered a musician who also reflects this wonder at the Universe around us, from both a poetic and scientific perspective. His name is Peter Mayer. He's Jimmy Buffet's guitarist, plus he has his own solo career. I ran across his song My Soul from his Midwinter album while looking for music for the Winter Solstice, and then featured more music from that album on my Facebook timeline. Plus today I featured his One More Circle on my New Year's Eve session on Facebook. I'd like to introduce you to some of his music that addresses the same things I talk about above. I do believe I've run across a kindred spirit!

Photos © 2008 - 2017 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Winter Solstice 2018

Photo © 2008 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Samhain 2018

It's Samhain time, when Autumn begins to fade toward Winter, and the spirits come to visit the physical world. This was the old Celtic New Year, a celebration of those who have passed on, a celebration of the last of the harvest; in general, a celebration of the glories of Autumn. It was eventually appropriated by the Church and "christianized" to become All Hallows Eve (Halloween). All Saints Day, and All Souls Day. And it's still a celebration of the best that is Autumn. I've posted about this in more detail; to read more just type Samhain in the search box at the top left of this page. For this year, I thought I'd just post some of my favorites among the seasonal photos I've taken through the years. And after you've looked at them I'll hook you up with some of my favorite seasonal music.

Clifton Burying Ground, Newport, RI

A trail in Miantonomi Park in Newport, RI

A pair of Mallards on Gooseneck Cove in Newport, RI

Extravagance - Ginkgo leaves on King St. in Shippensburg, PA

Autumnal reflections on the north duck pond in Dykeman Spring Nature Park, Shippensburg, PA

South Mountain from Black Gap Rd., Chambersburg, PA

Spring Hill Cemetery in Shippensburg, PA, with South Mountain in the background

I've created a YouTube playlist of videos of some of my favorite music for the Samhain/Halloween season; click here to check it out. But before you click, here's a list of what you'll find:

1. Camille Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre in an animation from PBS back in the 1980s. This has become one of my seasonal favorites.

2. All Souls Night, Loreena McKennitt's musical bridge between Samhain and All Souls, another of the songs I listen to this time of year.

3. A-Souling by the now-defunct New Zealand group Lothlorien. Soul cakes and souling (begging for said cakes from house to house) were originally a Samhain and early Halloween tradition before drifting over to Christmas. This tradition transformed into trick-or-treating.

4. Into the West by Howard Shore and Fran Walsh for the soundtrack of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King movie, and performed by Annie Lennox. This is a beautiful setting of  Gandalf's description of death as sailing into the afterlife in Tolkien's mythology, and a perfect fit for the theme of Samhain.

5. Tam Lin by Fairport Convention. Tam Lin is one of a collection of old ballads from the British Isles about less-than-savory characters luring innocents into the scarier corners of the afterlife.

6. Thomas the Rhymer, another of those old ballads, this one performed by Steeleye Span .

7. Now we hop over to Halloween, with I Put a Spell On You, a hit for Screamin' Jay Hawkins back in the '50s. But I have a particular fondness for this cover version by Creedence Clearwater Revival.

8. The Monster Mash by Bobby Pickett, a comic Halloween favorite.

9. The original video for Michael Jackson's Thriller, which was actually a short film by John Landis as a tribute to those old, cheesy horror films of the '50s and early '60s. I've never been a big fan of MJ, but this video produced by him and John Landis and Quincy Jones is a classic.

10. Beetlejuice is one of the best of the Halloween comedies, and this scene set to Harry Belafonte's Banana Boat Song has got to be one of the funniest and most fun scene of all time.

11. And last but not least, Time Warp from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. What a hoot!

Enjoy!

© 2018 by A. Roy Hilbinger