by Mark Chaffin | Feb 13, 2024 | Skipping Stones
“Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind.” King Lear “In the bleak midwinter, frost wind made moan. Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago.” Christina...
by Mark Chaffin | Aug 18, 2023 | Skipping Stones
“As we breathe out what trees breathe in,And the trees breathe out what we breathe in,So we breathe each other into life.” Marcia Prager, The Path of Blessing I have a friend, as many dendrophiles do whom most would call a tree. I call her Sylvie. Sylvie is a white...
by Mark Chaffin | May 24, 2023 | Skipping Stones
Said the thriving man to the tinker’s wife,‘Spell me the secret of your happy life.’‘I could not bide it, I was never madeto couch in bracken with the birch for shade.’‘And hills I love not, their ironic smileseems scornful of the things I hold worthwhile.’‘Nor am I...
by Mark Chaffin | Mar 3, 2023 | Skipping Stones
Greetings! To answer my own question, it turns out I’m your average bloke and a completely ordinary nature mystic. I forget to floss regularly, I eat ice cream late at night, I commune with trees, I will wander for hours in open, wild spaces. Yes, I will lead nature...