Taking Time Off, Meanwhile Here's a Photo to Contemplate

WHAT WE THINK of today as “Hallowe'en décor” reminds us the original Night of the Dead was a harvest feast -- a ritual of thanksgiving honoring not just our departed lovers, friends and kinfolk, but all the departed animals and plants whose flesh, vegetables and fruits assure human survival. It was also one of the high Gaian (also spelled Gaean) holidays – the night the year dies, when the spirit of quickening that returns in the spring abandons the land to winter. (That strange sense of the land's emptiness some of us feel on the day after Hallowe'en is thus metaphysically very real.) In honor of all that, here is a hitherto-unpublished image of my 1989 garden, in which I grew nearly all my own vegetables while living in Whatcom County, Washington, just south of the Canadian Border. Rolleicord II (note how the Xenar lens, despite its lack of color-correction, has captured the exquisitely golden light of a late October afternoon). Kodacolor 100, exposure not recorded. Photograph by Loren Bliss copyright 2013. (Click on image to view it full size.)

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AS THE HEADLINE suggests, I'm taking this week – and maybe the next week – away from Outside Agitator's Notebook to work on a couple of projects that have long been clamoring for my more focused involvement. Meanwhile, Happy Hallowe'en, Samhain blessings, and thank you all for your faithful readership. 

LB/27 October 2013

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