Greetings Friends and Neighbors, Snow falls audibly today. No, that’s not quite right. Snow falls silently but lands loudly today. Working with Arianna to collect rolls of Sheep fencing from the pasture, we pause our conversation to listen. Tiny compact pellets—not exactly snow or hail or sleet—tap where they make contact with horizontal tree branches and the flat of my shoulder. The day is remarkably calm. Snow falls directly downward. Absent Wind, I hear only the percussive sound of snow landing, or tapping. The Ewes and Lambs graze nearby, diligently sorting the green from the brown with nimble lips, finding the calories that will keep them alive through the long night ahead. Even this noisy Snow lands silently on their soft, oily wool. The ability of Sheep to live outdoors from sunlight seems even more miraculous than usual here on this hill where Summer’s growth fades from green to brown to white. Snow begins to accumulate, on insulated Sheep backs and bent-over Orchard Grass leaves. It looks like we are going to get more than just a noisy dusting. I have invited friends and neighbors to the Farm today to help with Fall cleanup projects. Maple leaves lying in heavy frozen mats on the front lawn of the old farmhouse now insulate beds of sprouted Garlic. Raking leaves in the Snow seems to articulate the seasonal transition. The folks who gather are some of the loveliest people you might ever choose to spend an afternoon with. And yet I notice that the steady hum of human speech renders my ears far less permeable to the more-subtle murmurings of the place itself—the crackle of frozen leaves as they are pried from the ground or the distant caw of Crow, or the guttural cluck of Raven. Think about how a radio left on in the background can easily elbow its way to the foreground of our awareness. This is how it goes for me on this work day. I just can’t sustain the quality of attention that I am used to on days where I am the only human here. And it strikes me that what I am longing for—the capacity to keep track of multiple overlaid human and non-human conversations—amounts to a sort of multilingual fluency.
Gropple - that's what cloud scientists call those little cone shaped hard snow...they start as a little bitty raindrop that freezes as it falls and snowflakes the drop falls on stick to the bottom - hence the little cone shape. Gropple is the weather trying to make up it's mind if it is going to warm up and rain, or cool off and snow more....
Gropple - that's what cloud scientists call those little cone shaped hard snow...they start as a little bitty raindrop that freezes as it falls and snowflakes the drop falls on stick to the bottom - hence the little cone shape. Gropple is the weather trying to make up it's mind if it is going to warm up and rain, or cool off and snow more....