Video Taken a Few Kilometres above Jasper Townsite, on Revisiting the Shore of Pyramid Lake during a Tour, September 20, 2017



Wordsworth, de Botton reminds us during this, the Christmas season of reading books and listening to music and remembering events, believed that spots of time spent in nature were, when recalled, correctives against the corrosive work done to human souls trapped in the enmity and envy that course through cities and industrial workplaces.

This is from Book Twelfth, The Prelude:

There are in our existence spots of time,
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence—depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought.
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse—our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired;
A virtue, by which pleasure in enhanced,
That penetrates, enables us to mount
When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.

The pic of Shelagh standing red-coated in the September snow at Pyramid Lake is a spot of time from 2017 for me. The video is poetry in slow motion:



Spots in time are like hearing sparrows in the gutters. They patch up my wounds.

                                                              *****

While tapping out this blog post, trying to make a connection with Wordsworth, I discovered, without looking for it, a connection between the writers of two other quite different Preludes.


I posted the verses on social media, tagging Craig Finn. And, then, from out there somewhere in this twittering world, received a reply:

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