Heart's Horizons

We selected some healthy looking, good-sized vines about a half-inch thick at the base where they rose from among the thick mountain bamboo to latch onto the trunks and lower branches of cedars and oaks, then lace their way into the upper reaches. I clipped the chosen vines near the ground (3 vines and a backup).

 Then we put on our strong gloves, grabbed hold of the end of each vine and pulled hard - 4, 6, even all 8 hands at a time - then pulled again, then again with a "Heave-ho," and again, leaning backward in the middle of the road, pulling hard, bending the low branches! Shaking the whole tree! Then bending high branches! Then pulling more slowly as the high vine began to come away, even bending the whole tree sometimes!

Working together, pulling another long vine down out of a big cedar or oak tree -- pulling harder and harder as slowly the whole vine surrendered, at last coming away until it was laying in the road and Trio had done that great thing, with the high tree, all the way up the tree and now they had to handle that 15-meter vine from high in those branches-- Kids LOVE to do really BIG things!

 Kaya, Mitsuki and Miasa were going to make Christmas wreaths.

A couple of weeks before, while we were doing some winter prep work out in the garden and surrounds, Mitsuki had said, mid-task, out of the blue - as the Trio seems to do these days - that she wanted to make a wreath. I asked her where that idea had come from. She answered "Christmas!" which answered my question well enough; one can't really expect grown-up-minded explanations from little girls, who live so much in their hearts.

 Since the Trio and I were finished enough with our prep labors I went and got the clippers, a saw, a big basket and 8 strong gloves, then we went down the inner road, where I know there are a lot of longstanding, well-developed vines of fujii (wild wisteria) and akebi (akebia trifoliata) among the trees and bamboo.

 Once the vines were down, the Trio trimmed them, coiled them, tied them with the tendrils and put them in the basket, along with shiny clusters of holly leaves that also grow by the road. They got some good evergreen branches too, plus some perfect pine cones from my pine cone stash in the shed.

Back home, they got the tree ornaments and some ribbon from the closets, then sat out on the deck with the scissors and all those bright things scattered around them. I showed them how to choose a length for the wreath size they wanted, how to coil the strong vine into a wreath size, how to fix it here and there along its length using the thinner tendrils, and that this was the way you could make baskets too - fujii vine is great for baskets - then I went upstairs for a while to do some editing and forgot about the time--

 When it was growing dark I came downstairs into a silent house, saw the Trio still outside working even in the the darkling cold, engrossed in the task of crafting their very first wreaths, absorbed in the art of it. I just stood there watching the design ideas flow, turned on the lights when it began to get too dark. The Trio went on working until they were content with their basic wreaths and went inside to fine-tune the decorations.

 Natural ways, natural tasks involving natural interests like the endlessness of seeds, branches and flowers, insects and animals - instead of only brief gadgetry - simply confirm that there is no substitute for the natural reaches of life, the wellspring of thoughts and imaginings that lead always onward, with no end but the heart’s horizons.

In that spirit, Happy Holidays to All.

OPERATION TORNADO

Yesterday in the clear, hot afternoon Echo and I had the Tornado Trio again, this time while their parents went to a nice French restaurant for lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon doing their own relaxing thing. As per the plan laid out in Operation Tornado we took the kids and their gear upmountain to a secret forest waterfall a kilometer or so along the rough road (the kids loved that rocking and bouncing!) above the spring we go to sometimes to get our special mountain water.

Kaya had visited the falls before and liked it, so we figured it would be a good place for the three to burn off some of their pent-up house-energy. When we got to the spot, made our way down the path from the road to the 5-meter-high roaring falls under a close canopy of trees and got the kids into the shallow sandy part of the pool, the twins looked way up at the giant roaring cascade and, all unexpectedly to me, got scared and wanted out immediately.

So we went back down to the spring to fill the jugs with water, the kids helping for about 30 seconds because from the spring there issues a small meandering baby stream of foot-wide overflow, in which all three girls splashed and played happily with their bags of beach toys for an hour or so until all the toys had been used up one by one in all the various permutations and they had learned for example whether it is possible and what it takes to fill a big water bottle from a stream by the spoonful and then empty it into the stream by the ladleful, how long it takes to empty a big bottle of toy-shoveled water into a little stream, how to hold the bottle while doing so (emptying whole bottles of water right out, again and again, without an adult interfering even once!), how much water a plastic bag can hold, how to carry a plastic bag full of water and how to pour it into a small-necked bottle, what happens when you suddenly squeeze the bag, or poke a hole in it etc., wisdom-bits we all must acquire (whether we remember it or not) and somehow assemble along the way into what we come to call understanding, as way back when little Keech had to learn whether or not dad's favorite pen would write on toast (nothing like a buttery nib), or how many times you can put a ball into a box and take it out, thereby early on acquiring a hands-on grasp of what he now understands as infinity.

Speaking of infinity, it was exhausting for Echo and I just standing back and monitoring the whole freestyle affair cubed, so when the trio at last wore the stream out, on condition they cleaned up all their beach toys we took them back down the mountain (fun rough road again!) to a secret little beach we know of on this side of the lake, where they could frolic in the waves and sing their spontaneous water songs while we lay flat on our backs in some shade on the sand and just breathed. We grownups have to play too, after all.