Tree Place

Still Delighting at the Taste of Wild Blackberries

/ Elisa / 6 Comments

August

“When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend

all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking

of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body

accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life darting among

the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.”

–Mary Oliver

An Excellent Photo Shoot, A Broken Camera, and A Teeny Tiny Back-up Camera!

/ Elisa / 3 Comments

Oh. I got up this morning, feeling more physically and mentally able. This was good. I was in the car by 7:00 a.m. I was not even thinking (ok so I was) about not stopping to pray. The object this morning was the light that I wanted on the fields in the center of the Tree Place. An hour of sensory-filled shooting. Ignoring a common malfunction of the camera. Suddenly, a new glitch. I frowned at it, couldn’t get it to go off, so, I pulled out the battery pack to reset it per usual. The camera didn’t tell me no. I took some more shots the ‘normal’ way and then the odd error again. Ut oh! I thought to take out the smaller camera, the one that has served me ever so faithfully and well since 2006. I grabbed a few shots with it and noted it’s own increasing set of malfunctions. I just smiled at it. It was a camera known for the board going in the first six months, mine was only doing it now. I did have a wince of panic at the possibility of losing both cameras at once. Well, I can’t change it. The large camera was just handed over to me, so I’m not out anything but my method of talking back to my Muse. I’ll patiently await discovery of what might ail it. Off to Walmart to see if a simple set of new batteries might take care of the problem. The larger camera didn’t put one file onto the card, not even when the top stated that it was functioning. I did get a few shots from the smaller. It was, and still is, a very pretty morning here. I’m really glad to have had the urge matched with ability to get there.

A Spring Day Walk, More from The Tree Place

/ Elisa / 2 Comments

Winter at The Tree Place

/ Elisa / 2 Comments

Breathing Vines--by elisabeth connelley

I took this image quite a while ago. I think I am going to try something new, and see how I feel about it. I know how I feel about it now, it isn’t good but I’m going to do it until at least the solstice. For now, I’m going to call the thing…daily dead things, or Winter at The Tree Place. I’m sitting here muttering to myself to quit complaining. The rest of me is saying, well, there is no life in dead brown and black things. No spark that says IMAGE ME! The argument is how can I show the play of light and energy, heat and feeling? I went back and I found this one, because it does. The sun was setting and it made it all look red. The image hasn’t been altered. The other day I visited the Tree Place and wondered at the warmth of the day. I wondered at the endless shades and textures of the browns! So, I’m going to try it.

Gratitude for When God Says NO!!

/ Elisa / 4 Comments

When I began to sprout this blog, I was making chicken salad for lunch and was greatly pleased with my ability to cook with what I’ve got at times when money is uhm tight. I’ll call it tight. How I got a bowl of salad and a few plates of food with the ingredients that I had, I really cannot say. It’s also delicious and a menu item from a place where I helped to do catering cooking.

An image I took when I was visiting the Tree Place just prior to the main flooding when I was confused as to why the road was closed to the bridge in Montoursville.

Montoursville Bridge Prior to Flooding Crest--elisabeth connelley

I’ve been debating putting up images of raging flood waters from the recent flooding in my area, especially since the Tree Place was involved. I do not like GIANT focus on disaster and devastation. While being very glad not to have been primarily affected in my home, those all around me within a mile or two were being evacuated. I have been greatly puzzled as, well I haven’t been in this area during such a flood event in the past. The one year was bad, I recall, but I didn’t have a car so, I could not see and comprehend the losses. It can even be physically impossible to see outside of one’s box, go figure! All of the roads around here, to my knowledge are not yet opened. Many bridges and entire highway surfaces simply torn away. It is difficult to imagine such power!

The first lesson that encouraged me to post today came from a thought that a friend passed to me and asked me to consider as I learned to understand, utilize, and modulate my own energies and anger. To keep the lesson short, I used to LOVE to throw things, the heavier the better. I worked backwards from furniture to rocks, glass to eggs and so on and so forth. On my insides I’d still throw things. He said, “Rocks are hard, water is patient.”

It took me a very long time to see and to witness what this meant. It’s a work in progress. The slow and steady working away of stone, by the smallest of drips. I used this teaching to learn to bend and not to break. I used this feeling to let things wash over and through me. Inside, I must admit I would have loved the ability to grind things and people with it, to wash them away, to make all in my own perception–clean. I do not think that with my hand feeling water current rushing by in cool clear water that I really ever did understand the power in water.

Here is the cute little house, that I could not really understand why no one resided in it, and hoped to be able to offer the farmer what would be a lower rent, knowing the small stream nearby might flood up onto the porch from time to time. I am glad I was not granted my fervent wish.

Caption and Source: MARK NANCE/Sun-Gazette
A farm between Williamsport and Montoursville is inudated with floodwaters Thursday morning.

It is the red house with the white-edged roof, next to the white building with red roof, up near the portion of road still able to be seen. I am not a flood victim today, because God said NO.

Here is an image that shows a potential outcome of such power, though I somehow imagine, not it’s upper limit of ability.

Caption and Source: MARK NANCE/Sun-Gazette
Route 973 now ends abruptly at the Slabtown Bridge, where a raging Loyalsock Creek has washed away the roadway and part of the bridge.

I think somehow inside that I equated patient with softness, lack of damage, lack of reaction. This is NOT true. Now, to know what I need to do with this. Who knows if I even yet comprehend the entire lesson.