Taos Mountain, behind the Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico, February 2007, photo © 2007-2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
thousands of years pass
summer, winter, spring, and fall
where mountain meets sky
-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
-related to post: haiku (one-a-day)
Looking at that photo I had the sensation of drinking a glass of iced water……..beautiful.
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Gorgeous view. I miss those mountains alredy and have only been homw a few days. I musy have mountain blood in me – but I have no idea how it got there.
I was so impressed with the mountains in the west this autumn. I’d never seen them in the fall. With recent snow at the higher elevations, the caps were white, the middle sections were yellow with thickets of aspen, and the lower regions were green with pine. I felt like I was looking at three seasons combined in one place – an odd, but thrilling sight.
mountain, you changeling
snow crested, yellow aspen-ed,
and pine ever greened.
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So crisp, this shot. Makes me shiver.
I love your haiku, too—the idea of the mountain meeting the sky. Really nice.
Ah, Bo, how great that you got to see so much color and variation. I’ve noticed in the Rio Grande Valley that the colors are more vivid than some years. I think the conditions have been just right. Fellow blogger and friend lil once told me that you have to have a cold snap so the cottonwoods don’t just wither from green to brown. And we must have had that cold snap, because we’re getting the full color.
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Jo, thank you. I like that description – drinking in a cool glass of water.
Bo, I love your haiku. I’ve seen a few of the photographs from your trip — gorgeous. I’ve been missing mountains lately. Mom and I drove through Virginia and West Virginia in July — tons of mountains. And, of course, there’s always the Great Smokies. 8)
Pennsylvania has beautiful rolling mountains. Montana the glacial truncated mountains surround some of the towns, laced by the Rockies. Taos Mountain holds a sense of peace for me for the times I have sat under her on writing and mediation retreats.
I try to call these places up when I need to find ground. Minnesota doesn’t have the mountains I am used to. But for the same feeling, I head to Lake Superior.
This image of Taos Mountain was taken in the dead of winter. I’ve posted a summer image on red Ravine, too. I think my Fall shots of Taos Mountain are on C-print color film. And I’m not sure where they are at the moment. I need to locate them.
I think I have mountain blood, too. But where does it come from. Good question.
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ybonesy, greetings in Portland, Oregon. How are the mountains there in Oregon this morning? I can’t remember now if you can see them from the city proper. It’s been so long since I visited Oregon. Any Oregon haiku waiting to escape? 8)
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Taos Mountain does have a timelessness, rising above. Way up there, everything else is down, down below.
After driving across country back in the seventies, I found that image recurring in my mind, Taos Mountain as you see it when you first ascend from the gorge, that perfect, pyramidal saddleback shape imprinted in memory.
I found out years later from “astrocartography” readings
( a computerized horoscope merging maps with the heavenly bodies transit at the time of birth) that R and I both had Neptune east-west crossing our Sun line north-south right there, at Taos. Don’t know what that means, but there was a sense of destiny about that crazy place.
Sometimes driving north on s. santa fe road, I’d see that looming mountain which dwarfs everything, and it would give me vertigo, like looking off into space, losing my place in time.
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Stunning image. The mountains here are less jagged, but no less beautiful.
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http://astrocartography.com/
in case anyone is interested, is about “locational astrology” Our friend was a guy named Jim Lewis, who invented this system. He passed away a few years ago, he was a great guy.
I think I confused the two meridians – the Sun transit is latitudinal, the Neptune line is longitudinal, ie. north-south.
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Stevo, must be amazing living near the mountains in China. Mountains are so grounding, wherever we find them. I met this native Montanan once who told me she couldn’t stand driving in the wide open spaces of North Dakota or Minnesota. She said she felt too exposed and missed the protection she felt looking out and seeing the Montana mountains. I don’t think she ever moved far from home or where she was born.
lil, thanks for the great link to the astrocartography. I read the bio of Jim Lewis, too. It seems like the legacy of his work carries on in honor of his life.
I used to go to an astrologer in Montana (once before and once after I moved to Minnesota) who did a little of an astrocartography reading for me at the end of my regular reading. She must have used something based on Jim’s software. Because at the end of our session, she handed me a map of the U.S. with latitude and longitude marks crossing at certain points, based on my horoscope and where the planets lined up.
I was amazed because the lines intersected at almost all the places I had been drawn to live. There was one set of intersecting lines going through northern New Mexico (and this was years before I took a writing retreat in Taos). But I had gone to New Mexico and Chaco Canyon during the Harmonic Convergence.
Anyway, I loved New Mexico and it was at a time when I was thinking of moving back out West. I always thought I would move to where I could be near mountains again (hasn’t happened yet!). I asked the astrologer if New Mexico would be a good place for me live.
She said I did have a strong pull there and some of the planets lined up but that I’d probably never live there. It was more of a spiritual place for me, a place that I would make pilgrimages to over the course of my life. So far, that has proved to be true.
Another of the intersecting lines went right through Minneapolis. I used to pass the Twin Cities in my 20’s driving home from Montana to Pennsylvania and wonder what it was like. I had no idea I’d one day live here, and maybe for the rest of my life. Who knows?
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That is so interesting…how can it be we are led to certain places due to the “accident” of birth – is it really predestined?
We had some of the same lines because we were both born in Philadelphia, 40 weeks apart.
One of the most auspicious intersections was in Hawaii – and as of yet (6 decades) we have yet to visit there.
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Not sure — is it accident or predestined? Fate or no rhyme or reason at all. Someone asked me in a conversation at the studio last weekend if I thought there was something lining up in the heavens with all the changes going on with the election and the economy. She said, “Do you believe that things could just line up right for these things to happen?”
I do. But I think it’s more complex than simply the planets lining up. We all have free will and freedom of choice. We get sidetracked, all kinds of things. But I do think we are in a big forward push in global evolution, and that there was another big push during the Harmonic Convergence in the early 80’s. Things fall away so new things can move into their place that move us forward as a planet. Yeah, I believe that.
I heard a round table on PBS last weekend and one person said he thought that all of George Bush’s mistakes and failures (that’s not to say he failed at everything), paved the way for the rise of someone like Obama. Perhaps the time is right.
I just happen to believe there is a spiritual element to it, too, and that the Universe lines up behind whatever happens. Keeping in mind that change is not always positive and not-so-great people also rise to power when things are out of balance.
Hey, interesting about Hawaii. I had intersecting lines somewhere in Europe I think. I have to find that chart again, the one of the world. I love discussing things like this. People have many different beliefs. And it’s so fun that you brought up the astrocartography!
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[…] freezing nights, spring mornings, cottonwood afternoons. She is there. You can see more of her in: haiku for the years , mountain haiku , Taos Mountain Haiku, Missing The Mountain. Or in the photo set […]
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