Ancient and compelling

Monday having been the Labor Day holiday all of yesterday, he comes this morning dressed as Tuesday. The sky has that peculiar orange-tinged brown of coming snow, even though it is already nearly 70 (F)/21 (C) and a little muggy, on its way to a forecast high of 93/34.

It could be Ash Tuesday, from the looks of it, but without pancakes. There is even something not unlike snow gently filtering down around me.

I came out this morning to find my car covered in a dusting of very fine ash, the skies smokey, the light heavily filtered and looking for all the world like it did during the recent solar eclipse, and ash falling ever so lightly from the skies. Today's forecast simply says, "smoke."

The Norse Ridge fire in the Wenatchee National Forest is raging and the winds are bringing its output our direction today. The cremation dust of so many trees swirls around us.

...like the girl
at a bend near the Museum gazebo: she tips
a throe of ashes from a brassy urn,
kneeling, not pious, just there, slanting her head
as if to speak to the passing, do it right,
shrug fine ores into the river—it takes so long
to cast away so little left of kin or friend
to Schuylkill, Delaware, Chesapeake, Atlantic,
someone she knew, walked gardens with, and must have loved. 

   - W. S. Di Piero, from The Ash Bringer

I had Al Stewart's Year of the Cat queued up on my phone this morning, so it proceeded to create an ad hoc playlist built around that song. Nostalgia music, most of which I hadn't heard in many years.

But kissed unconscious between Medicine Bow and Tombstone
He shall love at the precipice brink who would love these mountains.
Whom this land loves shall be a holy wanderer,
The eyes burned slick with distances between
Kennebunkport and Denver, minted of transcience.
For him shall that river run in circles and
The Tetons seismically skipping to their ancient compelling music
Send embassies of young sierras to nibble from his hand.  

   - Thomas McGrath, The Topography of History

Old tunes, if not "ancient compelling music," with which to drive through the ashes of ancient and compelling woods on this rather ad hoc Ash Tuesday start of the work week.

Today's playlist:

• Al Stewart, Year of the Cat
• Little River Band, Reminiscing
• Bread, If
• The Hollies, Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress)
• Blood, Sweat, & Tears, Spinning Wheel
• Cat Stevens, Wild World