Midwinter in Hyperborea. Rooting the snow-covered lawn behind the Ionian pillar stub are Artemis and Apollon, two of the deer that have been grazing in our garden for the past couple of years. Sadly for them, I heard there’s been a hit placed on their heads – incensed by the deer gang, sometimes six strong, ravaging their flower beds, the neighbors have decided to thin the herd. The Hyperborean maidens, daughters of Boreas, the North Wind, brought the worship of Artemis to the sacred island of Delos, but they also became the patron goddesses of archery: their names were Oupis, “aim”, Loxo, “trajectory”, and Hekaerge, “distance”. Just crossing my fingers that these two children of Leto are part of the Darwinian subset that survives -- even if they kill Bambi’s mother.

Crossing over – from the domain of the ”dung-dwellers” to the land of the Lapps; from the violence of summer to the slow decay of winter; from the lie of fixity to blessed mercurial anxiety. If one would like to anti-christen this place of power, it would have to be ”Neidonputous, ”Akanputous”, ”Louhenputous”. Carve silver or horn, traveler, pour a libation, for the days are getting short.