Phenology Site Visit - fourth day after full moon "When the River's Freeze Over" 2025/2026

I paid a brief visit to my phenology site this morning. Temperatures are low again this morning, and the snow pack has aged, it doesn't have the freshly fallen radiance anymore. I saw boot prints along with snowshare hare prints on the snow covering the ice of the creek, so some human has done the creek walk. I could still faintly hear the voice of the creek, the trickles of the small volumes that remain flowing emanating from cracks in the ice layers. The voices of ravens came to my ears as well, as I stood in a moment of stillness in the bend of the creek where I planted the Heart-Leaved Alexander earlier this winter. I sent prayers to those seeds for their vitality in the soil over the winter.

Today I was struck with a heightened awareness of how colours have distances and directions in nature, and even movements and timings ... blue is often in the sky, a backdrop to all other distances, an envelope ... brown is down, the colour of earth, a quality of thickness ... green as the colour of plant life waxes and wanes with the solar cycle ... the colours aren't just colours they are living intelligences. There are internal colours too, that appear when we dream, and if we radiate a particular dreaming colour, we will see where that colour is alive in our living surroundings. Noticing all this is deeply orienting.

I was privileged to have a coyote reveal kinself to my seeing on this walk as ki traversed the side ravine, a single magpie (that I noticed) in attendance.