Here are some discoveries from a recent study of eels:

They migrate, leaving European rivers and shores on dark autumn nights.
At night, they swim up near the relatively warm surface of the sea, and then dive deep - several hundred meters - into very cold waters early each morning. The scientists speculate the cold delays reproductive development which would be inconvenient during the journey.

'Dr Kim Aarestrup, who is a Senior scientist at the Technical University of Denmark, National Institute of Aquatic Resources (DTU Aqua), and leader of the tagging work in the EU EELIAD project says: "This is a brilliant result in many different ways. Eels are difficult to follow once they leave European shores, so their behaviour as they migrate to their spawning grounds is almost a complete mystery."'

They learned the eels take an indirect route to the Sargasso Sea that takes advantage of ocean currents that improve their speed and arrival time.

[Technical University of Denmark (DTU) (2009, September 29). Unlocking The Mystery Of European Eel Migrations. ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 29, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2009/09/090929100652.htm]

From another article I learned the cusk eel and many species of fish make noises to attract mates and during competetive or antagonistic situations. Also read that fishes that live in the dark have more sensitive hearing than other fish.

I don't know anything about this statue. It was in the room I rented during my stay last May in Fort Collins. But, he was fascinating enough, I took several pictures of him from different angles, and at different times of day.

brush reaching up
we paint the moon with water
to tempt the sky to rain

when the mind's noisy
listen to the rock
bring its silent weight within

the half moon's
a bright cradle
above the bay;
a man is whistling

'Do not go about encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides; if a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end.'
G. K. Chesterton

The fog was rolling in yesterday about the time I took these shots. The mood is what one might expect from fog, gray and muted. But as night approached, the light changed, and I took a number of pics like those from yesterday's post. I guess the droplets of water shift the spectrum. I didn't manipulate the color at all. (I rarely do, and then it's only saturation adjustment.) I kept taking pictures because the colors around me became so rich and exhilerating, like walking through Oz.

A good walk can fix a lot of things, and the one I took late in the afternoon turned magical as evening arrived. A light fog rolled in, softening the light, and the smell of autumn on its way permeated the cool air. People on the streets were easy and friendly. It's a peaceful night.

Ring the bell.

Enter the scary door.

Make lots of mistakes.

Learn something new.

Thank a teacher.

Sister Adele Bush was not my favorite teacher. She was kinda grouchy, had bite and sarcasm in her conversation, and rarely told anyone they did anything right. She was a little scary. I remember no student chatter in her classes. It was uncertain whether she liked us or not.

But she was an astute thinker. She loved literature and the English language. She really loved poetry, and told us when a poet looked at a tree, he didn't see green, he saw many shades of green.

Over summer break, everyone in grades 10 through 12 was assigned the same three books to read, usually classics in fiction. (The only title I can remember right now is Dickens' Great Expectations.) Our assignment from Sister Bush was to read the books, and write five sentences about each one. That's it. No essay or paper or test coming up. Just five sentences.

That wasn't so hard, really. You could do your best work because it was a relatively small project.

It was a shock to see everyone's perfect sentences come back all marked up in red. We had to go back and rewrite each one. However, as tedious as that was, we could see how logical the corrections were, how they improved the clarity of what we were trying to express.

Her grouchiness now seems so inconsequential. She taught us to compose a sentence, the fundamental unit of written communication and art. To care enough to insist we learn this well, to evaluate so thoroughly each one of our summer sentences, that was love.

Young men are sitting in the grass,
taking in sunlight.
Cheerful dogs chase after tennis balls.
I breathe in.
- we're all connected,
threads in the cloth of this moment,
the cloth of this park -
I breathe out.

I saw the black and white parked just beyond the gate as I walked through some oaks. I paused--maybe the police car was empty, but no. He got out and came toward me and said, 'Shall I unlock the gate, or do you want to climb over?'

I got a ticket today. I didn't get mad. I deserved it. I said to the cop, 'I'm a bad girl.'

Though I'm really not a bad girl, just a little misbehavior, hiking on the property of the water company.

I got out the same way I got in, throwing my back pack under, then crawling under after it with Officer Wilson waiting on the other side. A traffic ticket 25 years ago was the last time I got into trouble with the law. (Though for convenience, I've broken a few since like exceeding the speed limit, making u-turns, and snagging wireless parked outside of a school to read email...) But I don't know, squirreling under a gate to greet a policeman...it was undignified.

He was nice, as nice as someone doling out a ticket can be. As he was filling out the information, I saw a large revolver and a scarred steel billy club attached to his belt. He answered some questions about where to go hiking where there aren't so many people.

'No Trespassing' was posted in big enough letters. I crossed a barrier. It was wrong. I knew it at the time.

I saw 4 wild turkeys in the sun-bleached grasses, deer prints and fawn prints on the trail. I saw the scat of coyote, and of a bobcat, or whatever kind of wildcats they have there, and of one more predator mammal, smaller than the other two. Saw a harrier, another hawk I haven't looked up yet, some towhees. Heard the wind rattle through the dry oaks. Lay in the grass, listened to a fly quietly buzzing in the sunshine. Breathed the silvery fragrance of the pines.

I wonder, though, how much this ticket will cost.

I felt rather numb at first, then regrets about being a bad example, and then, oddly, I felt chirpy, this a new experience, and now...I don't know. My inner jury is out.

To be one with 10,000 things is wisdom.

Shodo Harada Roshi

I've watched the San Francisco multi-lane roads, mesmerized. During hours the highway isn't congested, the cars seem to have some magnetic force that keeps them a polite precise safe distance apart, as though the cars were one entity. When I lived in Texas, while drivers were quite friendly, traffic was more erratic, more teeth-clenching. Far more road mavericks zipped back and forth across lanes at non-constant speeds.

As humans we seem to have both tendencies, one to connect with each other on one cooperative wavelength; the opposing tendency is to forge our own paths.

Maybe it's healthy to honor both, to be in touch with the pulse of our community while at the same time in touch with our individual core wisdom. We can participate in those activities that support the happiness and well-being of all, but can also be a voice or nonparticipant when something strikes us as not quite kosher or even just not right for us. (It's been said before that in some situations, the best way to love one's government is to oppose it.) We can both play in the band and strive to avoid crowd hysteria or hierarchical pressure. We can contribute our unique perspectives to the direction of the community when our talents are relevant to the task at hand.

I think it's a strength of the United States that its constitution is designed to both support the needs of the people, and to protect the rights of the individual. We lean one way and then the other, depending on the climate, often with rancor and tedious, heated battles. Sometimes the government fails both ideals by maintaining the status quo in the face of change, or only serves itself. But the fact that for over two centuries we keep up the discussion, keep hammering out the boundaries, is a testament to our determination to maintain a practical respect for both ideals.

We keep in touch with the community, with our personal truths. We can be both a part of the galaxy, and each true to the fire of our own stars.

There's a tall chain link fence
that borders a corner of Bushrod Park.
Wet, tangled weeds cling to the ankle.
This morning
a gate was open to the other side.
There above the soccer fields
the light of dawn hung
suspended in mist.
To step through the gate
was to shyly enter glory
to breathe illuminated air
to see God's breath
to know it's there so near to us
just beyond the fence.
The birds fly
in and out of light.
The sun burns away
the extraordinary
and we step back through the gate to the ordinary
to the fenced-in corner
where we take apart
and build and take apart,
tie and untie
and wrestle in our sleep.
We find and share bits of ecstasy
from our gritty work
our gardens and dreams
from our awkward embrace
and encounters with each other.
We take comfort from
water droplets of light
that give us thirst
for our true home
so near to us
through the little gate
in the chain-link fence

I photographed this in White Salmon, Washington. I don't know it's identity, but it looks as though the one flower could seed a whole field-

I was googling pasque flowers, trying to make sure my memory was correct on these stragglers in the volcanic dust. (They seem to be the seed phases of Western Pasque Flowers.) In doing so, I came across the website of John H. Boyd, III (http://jboyd.net/PacNW07/PacNW07q.html ) which intelligently wanders through Crater Lake, J.R.R. Tolkien, bird species, and Japanese woodcuts.

Boyd uses a Lord of the Rings quote as he departs Crater Lake:

As Bilbo Baggins would say, "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there is no knowing where you may be swept off to.”

There's a cluster of palm trees in Dolores Park in San Francisco - a peaceful space, a little ecosystem within the big city.

Light comes to us in many forms, hues and degrees of brilliance. Light comes from many sources. Darkness helps us to see that and to learn more about light.

Life may never make sense
but there's always quite a story -