PAW 2006 - #16 - Awen Cara

This is Awen Cara (lit. "Flowing Spirit Friend" in Gaelic)
I spent much of this past weekend making and getting to know this flute.



For our upcoming 19th wedding anniversary, my dear wife gifted me with a seat in Tim Spotted Wolf's Flute Carving Workshop this last weekend. Tim and Wood Artistian Eve Abreu hold the workshop at Eve's studio "Ravenwood" in Bridgton.


This is Seabhac ("Hawk".) I carved Seabhac into the foot of this flute. Hawks are quite special to me. We have several hawks here on our land whom I watch (and who watch us.) They teach me a lot.


This is the saddle of the flute. On this style of flute it is more than decoration, it is necessary to the proper airflow. The first saddle that I made during the workshop was supposed to be Dobhran ("Otter".) I don't work well carving in three dimensions and so as Beth said when I brought it home...it looked more like an ill dinosaur than it looked like an Otter. :)

For the replacement pictured above, I took a small piece of the wide pumpkin pine boards that we removed from the 1789 Federal Home that stood on this land for more than 200 years before the fire in 1995 and I carved and sanded it down to a correctly sized saddle. On top of this I placed a piece of real ivory that we also salvaged from the keys of the old player piano that was also destroyed by the fire. I scrimshanded Doire ("Stag") into the ivory and he looks wonderful. This saddle fits the flute better, has much more meaning for me and sounds even better than the Prehistoric Otter that I carved in the workshop did!

Awen Cara continued

This is the Druidic symbol for Awen (flowing Spirit). Having the symbol for Awen on the flute as appropriate as you make spontaneous music with such an instrument as a meditation rather than using sheet music. This type of flute is in a pentatonic scale that is common to many indigenous peoples' culture (Celts included.) I find that the pentatonic scale is terrific when you don't want to think about music but just want to make it happen.


The beak that I was initially going to remove, but now realise adds a lot of character and personality to the flute.

I very much enjoyed the workshop. Though I'm not Native American Indian by culture and do not feel drawn to practise their rituals, there are certain elements of ritual that are common to most of the first peoples around the globe. The sacred meditation that comes from the flow of vibration and welling up of spirit is one of these elements common to all peoples. Tim's class recognises this and the flutes are born from blocks of white cedar in a very positive ritual 'cedar circle' with honourable intent and a relationship with the participants and the flutes is well formed. I highly recommend the workshop if you have any interest in sound as a meditative or healing tool in the world, regardless your religion.

PAW 2006 Wk #15 - Beth and Grover

Just a shot of beth with a balloon that she drew a dog's face on. I thought is was cute and have been otherwise busy to be out gathering PAW photos.

PAW 2006 - WK#14 - Fessenden Tor

Luna rises nigh
as we four journey upward
on our mountain high.

Tracey and I took our grrrls up onto the top of the mountain that we live on this afternoon after Nicole's 9th Birthday party. We needed to work off all of the cake and ice cream and we've sadly not been up to the summit of Fessenden Tor for over a year even though we are right here all the time. I needed a break from Photoshop yesterday and so I took my daily walk up to see how it might have changed. I went further over onto another ridge that I'd not been to before because I noticed that there is a well worn path over the other side and was excited to show everyone the great views from that side of the mountain as well, so we packed some water, matches and a good knife, grabbed some stout walking sticks and up we climbed as Luna rose up in the East South East....


Trace and our grrrls on the ridge.


Trace took a shot of me with them too (which is a rare treat, because I'm usual behind the camera and don't get enough photos taken with my daughters.)

Fessenden Part II

Our rugged hiker Nicole...


and her equally stalwart sister Beth...



WAY back in 1789 a Federal Style house was built on our land and another just across the street a year or so previous. Here, you can see the evidence of where those intrepid settlers split the massive granite slabs for the foundations to those first two homes in Denmark (the neighboring house still stands, ours burned in 1995) from right here on top of the mountain upon which they were built. Having moved some very small bricks of granite several hundred yards last fall, it boggles my mind at how much labor it must have taken to move these stones down over the mountain without destroying the sticks of granite or killing anyone in the process. The slabs that held up our foundation were several tonnes each.


Some neighbor of our who comes up here must also share my love for small stone shrines tucked away in remote places that are thriving with palpable spirits of place.


This last shot is the view from the other side of the mountain that we've been enjoying for years. Though you can't really see a whole lot of civilisation out there, this looks out to the north and west over the towns of Denmark and Brownfield, Maine and further into New Hampshire.

PAW 2006 - Wk 13 - Maine Maple Sunday

maple sugar treats
abound in early April
much to our delight

If you click on the above photograph, a small flash gallery will open up (takes a minute to load all of the images) of several of the photos that I made at the Weston Family Farm Stand in Fryeburg on the 26th of March for this year's Maine Maple Sunday celebrations. If you choose that presentation, simply close the window when you are done and you will return here.

If you would like a more multi-media presentation, I've created a streaming video presentation and linked it HERE. (This project hosted via YouTube.com so we're at the mercy of their bandwidth. If the video doesn't load from my site, please try viewing it directly on their site HERE.)

This is my very first attempt at creating a slide presentation with ambient audio recorded on location and with soundtrack and voiceover audio recorded and edited in my home 'studio.' I'm sure that given time, I'll get better at this new menium, but I'm having fun and hope you enjoy it regardless. :)

Rainbow

just a cool rainbow
that we saw headed in town
to see battlefield


Battlefield Band played an excellent gig at the Chocolate Church in Bath.